What am I doing here?

A random assortment of manuscripts, projects, half starts and stops, crazy ideas, half-ass data, and intentions for the future. That is my professional life right now.

I thought that maybe if I were to get a faculty position, I would feel more dug-in, more settled, more focused, but now I doubt my ability to get a position, and even whether I am cut-out for academia at all. What I really want is to go home and resume my old life.

Why did I come here? It is still pretty clear. I came because I was offered the position, and it wasn't just any position. It was at the top University, with a department that is packed with leaders in my field, to work with a big name, who I know and like personally, in a dynamic and unique city. There was no way I could have turned that down.

But now, more than a year later, I realise that the dynamism of the city is lost on me as I only ever spend time at work. As for the advisor, department and Uni, it's still all there, looking very nice on my CV, but I have very little in the way of projects to show for it. Preparing for conferences that I have attended for the past few years, I also realise how far my research has strayed from the things that I am passionate about. I have nothing to present at these conferences.

How do I find a way, other than getting a faculty job and starting my own lab, to resume my old research?

Life as a singleton

Going home is always a dangerous situation for a post-doc. For me, I was dreading it, knowing that I would see the life that I left behind, and everything and everyone I was missing. And, it happened. I came to THAT point. The point where I have to consider that I’ve made some horrible life choices and that I am nowhere where I want to be in my personal or professional life.

Now I don’t regret my life choices, and it is easy to blame the recession for lack of jobs, and I’m sure lots of funding applications get lost…but that aside, my career is stalling, and my personal life is hanging by a thread and causing upset in everyone’s life. There is the realisation and recognition that if I don’t make some changes very, very soon, I will never be able to go back. Now I don’t mean physically or geographically here, I mean mentally to a place that involves other people – real people – in my life. I have lived alone for so long. I have spent more than half my life making sacrifices for myself and no one else. Telling myself that everything would pay off in the long run, and that when it does I can focus on other things. But I’m realising that the things I’ve always done, the way I’ve always done them, has not paid off, and I am failing in life.

I live this life that is so quiet and self-absorbed. I like being alone more than I like being with people. But I also want a home and a community, and to be with my partner. And I realise that if I don’t start making sacrifices for someone else, there won’t be anybody else. And I’m not sure if I’m not okay with that.