I Don't Know if I Should Bother

I am in the humanities and work at a medium-sized regional state university. I am basically a lecturer, on a renewable one-year contract, theoretically renewable indefinitely (some have been here many years and are not going anywhere), although just to keep us in our place we are titled as "temporary." I like the school, I like my colleagues a lot and I think they like me, and the work is pretty good. I have a 4/4 load with no committee work, and the pay is about as low as you would expect. Teaching is what I like; I do very little research, which is why I haven't gotten anywhere. The truth is that I don't much like writing. Apart from the job insecurity, the position I have now is pretty much ideal for my limited ambitions. I mostly teach surveys but do get to teach an upper-level course every so often (usually a "special topics" course in my particular little niche). Current University is an hour-plus commute from home; "home" is where I did my Ph.D., and I own a house and have roots there, and quite like the place.

Part of me thinks that I should get over my feeling that I am a failure if I don't get a "real" (tenure-track) job and just settle into being happy at the place I am indefinitely, going nowhere but being fairly contented, and accepting that I'll always be called "temporary," which really only means I have about the same job security as people in the non-academic world, after all. Is it really so bad, I wonder?

But at some point I fell in love with someone from another state -- worse, another academic. We are maintaining a long-distance relationship, actually quite happily, but we do long to be together. The trouble is that neither of us has the job prospects to make that doable. Mr. Rabbit (to whom I am not actually married) is in the hard sciences. He too wants to teach most of all. He had been teaching as a renewable VAP in another country for several years, but his department was eliminated. Since then he has been unsuccessful finding another teaching job, and in desperation he took a private sector job, which he hates.

I had two campus interviews in the winter, both at regional universities similar to the one I am at now, and did not get either job. (The second one never even contacted me afterward.) The first of them was the one I really wanted, and was in an area with several colleges. Mr. Rabbit could probably have found adjunct work there if nothing else, which he would prefer to the non-teaching job he has now, and the location wasn't too bad. But, alas.

So, to my surprise, I got another interview despite the lateness of the season. I applied at a community college elsewhere in my state. I apply to CCs all the time, but have never had one show me any interest before. I did a phone interview and now they want me to come to campus.

Good news, right? Well, I'm actually a little dismayed, since I had hoped interviewing was done for me until fall. I applied to the job solely because I saw that they also had an opening suitable for Mr. Rabbit. He applied there, but has not heard anything. I'm not sure I would even take a job there if one were offered. Here are the pros and cons as I see them:

Pro:
A teaching-oriented job, which is what I really want.
I wouldn't be called "temporary" anymore so it would feel perhaps more like a "real job."
It's in my state, not all that far from where I are now, so fairly close to family and other familiar things.
If I worked at a community college for a while, that might make me more hirable by other CCs, which so far have been ignoring me.

Con:
As far as I can tell, they do not have a tenure system, and so it is not a TT job.
It would be a lot more work than I do now.
I wouldn't ever teach an upper-level course or deal with majors again (something I do only occasionally now, but at least it does happen).
The city it's in is kind of a depressing place and isn't very close to any major cities.
It wouldn't be a "good enough" job or a nice enough location for it to be worth Mr. Rabbit moving there and adjuncting, and it doesn't seem as though he'll get offered (or even interviewed for) the job he applied for there.
I would have to sell my house in a terrible market.
I would be giving up a job I'm fairly comfortable in and that probably isn't going anywhere.

The cons look a lot bigger, laid out. So I guess I'm wondering if I should even bother to go through the campus visit given that I don't see myself likely to take the job. I am supposed to call to make arrangements this evening. If I did go it would be kind of a problem as I am teaching an intensive summer class that meets every weekday for hours, and missing even one day of it would be too many so I would have to arrange for someone to cover it. I'm not looking forward to the hassle.

I suppose this might not really belong here in the Two Body forum, since my relationship is just one of the complicating factors. But it is really an extremely important part of my life, more important to me than my career. I will happily go wherever Mr. Rabbit finds a job he wants to stay at; but so far I'm the one who's been getting interviews.

One more factor is that I have applied to a non-academic job that I rather like the sound of, and might take if it were offered. They won't be inviting people for interviews until the end of June. That's a whole issue for another post and another forum (leaving academia would be an extremely angstful decision to make).

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