Academia has scarred me, and I am not sure I will recover, but the alternatives might have been worse.
I don’t know whether pursuing other avenues (the industry, as some colleagues would call it) would have saved me from experiencing this forever sense of doom. Perhaps it is just a natural part of growing old and saying forever goodbye to a greener youth. I do not know.
One fact is that I have experienced many things in my workplace, most of which have been sour and disappointing.
I recently realized that I have at least three things I need to let go of to improve my situation.
(Stop) pushing.
No more rushing anything. No more struggling and neglecting everything that matters to meet the next deadline. No more late-night/weekend/ holiday working. No more “research” for the sake of publishing. No more promises. No more “Yes sir, I can do it all during the next week”. No more continuing the infamous legacy of “living for working”.
No more normalization of a job that takes over everything (physical and mental): health, happiness, family, and ultimately freedom.
(Goodbye to) finding purpose at work.
As a PhD student, I was hard-wired (I need to stress this term, as I used to be an individual capable of autonomy before the irreversible? 1–0–1 Academic brainwash) to treat work as a vocation.