So far, all major transitions in my academic —or professional if you'd consider a PhD a real job— life have taken quite long, with more or less fault of my own.
When I first entered university, I was already a year behind because I'd dropped out of high-school before and hadn't had my diploma ready (surprisingly for me and all who knew me back then, I passed the standardised test to enter the major Mexican university, UNAM to study Economics).
Then on the undergrad to master's transition I lost a year from when I finished to when I started in Edinburgh; while this was my fault to a degree, it was a choice and the wait was virtually inevitable, I honestly don't remember many highlights of that year other than attending the graduation (which I did mostly to thank my parents), doing a s**tton of bureaucracy and attending some schools and conferences as a non-presenting student. In this stage my life continued almost normally and I had my friends and family; what was painful was the whole wait of outcomes: the English test (IELTS in my case), the university applications (if I remember correctly I narrowed my options to only two programs in the UK, the other was at Uni Glasgow and I turned it down), the scholarship(s) and the visa. I wrote about this back in the day (in Spanish) and the whole timing was just right, I don't think it could've been done much differently. In any case, as I said, it was totally worth it, that was literally the second time I stepped on a plane (first on my own and first travelling abroad) and the whole thing made me mature and grow incommensurately.
Then the master's to PhD transition lasted half a year (Oct 16 to March 17), which wasn't so bad, considering I only started looking and applying shortly after back in Mexico; here the major issue was the uncertainty of not knowing where I'd end up or what I'd end up doing: back in Edinburgh I had focused on theoretical particle physics and I was looking for alternatives, as I wasn't keen on pursuing research in the field, I even remember sending a couple of emails to do research in renewable energies! The only other good offer I remember turning down was a doctorate in Probability and Statistics at CIMAT. The longest wait was for the paperwork in the university, I only had an informal offer from my supervisor but the formal acceptance took some 3 to 4 months; surprisingly the visa process was extremely quick, I just had to fill some forms and take the letter from the university and in a couple of days my visa was ready. I remember some really bad days and this time the feeling that I was already too old to be living at my mother's house and being paid everything started to bother me; I also didn't get a job during this time and had almost no savings left (fun fact, when I received my first payment in Melbourne, I'd left my Mexican bank account with less than 100 MXN or approx 5 USD).
Now it's been a similar story and I would say I am mostly at fault, since I knew that I had to be looking for positions and start filling up applications before finishing the PhD and I only did so after having submitted my thesis. Even then, it still took a little more than two months for the company to finish writing my contract (mind you, the institute is newly created, literally having started this year), then lunar year, and now the visa process, so a lot of it was out of my hands.
Now I can identify two (highly correlated) main sources of stress that are making me go insane: economic dependency and lacking real responsibilities. These are correlated because I can't really get one going without the other and more generally my life seems to be on hold until these two are clear. Also, it's quite strange because even though I am free to do whatever I want during this time, I don't feel quite free because I'm tied to this insolvency and the wait to get things going in Taiwan.
It's funny but during the PhD I became very square with regards to my schedules and I felt quite a lot of distress when the pandemic hit and I couldn't get on my day as usual. Now it's kind of the same, and even though I have a routine already during my stay in Mexico, it feels lack of a clear objective and overall sense. It's a tad ironic that having so much freedom actually can make you go insane. It reminds me of Camus' or other existential philosophers' discourses.
Anyhow, they say it gets darkest just before dawn, and I'm pretty sure I'm now seeing the end of it.
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