A Year Out From Sixth Tour Bidding: The Daydream

I’m not bidding in this current cycle. I already have my assignment to Burma that starts summer 2025 — hence my current long-term Burmese language training to prepare. But fellow FSO friends in the last year of their current posts are bidding for their onward assignments. Soon, their wait will be over.

Short-listed bidders received their Bureau Leading Candidate (BLC) emails last week. Those with a BLC topped a shortlist for a job they presumably really wanted. They are now anticipating the handshake offers expected to follow after the holiday weekend.

Bidders who didn’t receive a BLC may be wondering if they’ll still get a handshake in the first round, or if it’s back to the drawing board, trying to capture previously unavailable jobs that reappear unexpectedly as incumbents curtail or bidders break prior handshakes.

Some bidders are hoping a bidder above them on a shortlist snags a handshake on a different job, meaning the offer could still come to them.

Some are fretting about the number of bidders in their grade exceeding the availability of in-cone assignment types, and thinking about a Plan B, or Plan C…

And of course, some are daydreaming excitedly – either about the promise of a handshake they got or all the handshakes they could still get when nothing is decided yet.

All of that intrigue reminds me that in just one year, it will be my turn to bid again, this time for my sixth tour. (Tashkent, Canberra, Ciudad Juárez, Washington, Rangoon, ??)

I’ve never taken a one-year posting before Burma (which has recently changed its tour of duty to two years, but I am not extending).

So I will no sooner settle into Rangoon (and by “settle in” I mean be aware of where my toothbrush is but have only an inkling of my new job) than it will be my turn at the bidding musical chairs. I will also bid having uprooted our life in Virginia, putting most of our household effects in storage to go to a war zone post with no idea when – or on what continent – we’ll see them again, nor where we’ll be going when we leave Burma.

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FSOs dread bidding for different reasons. It’s tiring to try and game out our lives so far in advance, with too many unknown variables to solve for.

And FSOs put massive energy into their bidding efforts. Analyzing the Department’s annual bidding guidance, gathering data and researching prospective jobs, putting together your materials, attending interviews, and navigating the enigmatic process for lobbying decision-makers — all while holding down your full-time job and life — is a lot in and of itself.

Add the effect of the eventual outcome on the perceived happiness and financial, physical, professional, emotional, and academic wellbeing of you and your family — and the inability to totally control said outcome — and you can expect some nerves and angst. Said more concisely: bidding matters! I’ve said it before, but it matters where you go, how you feel about it, and what it “costs” you.

Of course, successful outcomes will look different in each particular situation, because success is based on an individuals bidder’s goals and trajectory. One person’s nightmare can be another person’s dream. But the bidding process itself (the nuts and bolts of which I’ve outlined extensively in prior posts tagged “Bidding”) is still rife with ways to punch you in the self-esteem and professional competence, if you let it.

Will they like me? Will they think I’m smart enough to do this job, even though we all already work here?! What if I get an offer to go to a post where I really don’t want to live? What will it look like if the music stops… and I don’t get a chair?

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But there is an aspect of bidding that most FSOs love, including me. It’s the most exciting thing about bidding: the daydreaming. It’s the real hope and promise that keeps me going: the chance to continually reinvent oneself in new and different contexts, and thinking about what that might look like.

It’s also the ability to look at the name of any post on the list and ask yourself, What is the best thing about this place/job? To consider the unconsidered: to find the diamond in the rough, to predict an experience that’s unimaginable, to imagine what could happen there if you gave it a chance, even if you’d never heard of it five minutes before.

Daydreaming can happen anytime, but it’s usually (a) while you’re researching prospective vacancies and see only endless possibilities; (b) after you submit your bid list and are filled with anticipation about what you’re going to get because anything on your list would be A-MA-ZING in its own way; and (c) when the promise of your exciting, confirmed next job helps pull you forward through the end of a tough tour. (Case in point: looking forward to Australia!! after two years of visa work and various struggles in Tashkent.)

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I must say that since my Foreign Service candidacy began in 2011 and I joined in 2014, there has been a delicate tension between the wanting to know how things will go at every stage and the accepting of ambiguity and even embracing the unknown.

The longer I’m in, the more I’ve been able to surrender the details of the former — the control of which is an illusion anyway — and the more comfortable I’ve become trusting V and I to meet the challenges of the latter. The unknown means anything could happen, and a lot of those things could be terrific!

After half a dozen PCS moves and many things going wrong both expectedly and unexpectedly, it seems I would be more pessimistic. In some ways I am, and more married to my ideas of what I’m aiming for, particularly in what could be our last couple of tours as I approach retirement eligibility.

Equally true is that my mind is now also more free to manage the details and to-dos on autopilot and reserve the bulk of my focus on all the wonderful things that could happen. We have enough muscle memory to not be easily thrown off by the planned disruptions. We know the disruptions are the door opening to something life-altering we could have never imagined and looking back, would never give up.

The FS is a uniquely thrilling and patriotic experience that has been worth it in many ways. The anticipation and endless possibilities. A time when the world feels wide open, because we can really picture ourselves living different lives in various countries. Each bid represents a potential future—whether it’s a bustling city in Europe or Latin America full of vibrant culture, a remote African outpost with rugged landscapes, or an island town where life moves at a slower pace. A future where the familiarity of us and the way we are gets filtered through a multi-dimensional prism, creating ripples across our reality we could not have designed alone.

The period before assignments are confirmed is like a blank canvas, allowing you to imagine yourself adapting to new customs, exploring unknown streets, and embracing the adventure of a fresh start in a place you’ve only read about. It’s a time when hope, curiosity, and excitement take center stage, as you wonder where this next chapter might lead you.

In a year from now, I don’t know what will be on my bid list. I have some ideas, but I don’t really know. But I can dream of myself in 2026 or 2028 or even 2030, strolling the streets of Dublin, shopping in Hanoi, welcoming my family for a visit in Zagreb, sitting in a cafe in autumn in Sarajevo or Belgrade or Sofia.

I can’t see ahead to 2025 and whatever problems it might bring. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say I’m fine with those being 2025 problems that the 2025 me will manage.

In this moment, before I get an unexpected offer that leaves me scratching my head with disappointment or confusion or jumping with elation, before the hundreds of photos in Facebook albums become distant memories of what actually ended up happening, before I get so excited escaping into the future that I forget to be present in the here and now, I can daydream about what might be.