Mad World

You might imagine the world of work outside academe is a "mad world," where

All around [you] are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for the daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere

And you wouldn't be entirely wrong. But academe has its own share of "sorrow" and "no tomorrow," and, if you've found your way to this blog, you, too, probably "find it hard to take/When people run in circles."

Tears for Fears wrote the original song. Alex Parks covered it more recently. I like the Gary Jules version:

No one ever said any of this living business was easy ... If you're starting to think you're crazy because things no longer seem to be what everybody else says they should be, possibly it's because you're starting to perceive things closer to how they really are ...