A few months ago, I led a Playful Writing workshop where we drew the shapes of our narratives. This activity was inspired by Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative by Jane Alison. In this book, she describes the shapes that narratives take, beyond the traditional arc that we often expect. I was so intrigued by this idea that I developed a writing workshop called “Mapping your Story” that asked participants to draw the shape of their narrative.
The last time I did this workshop, I wrote with my students, trying to draw the shape of my choice to leave my academic career. I ended up with a spiral, interrupted by wavey sections and straight lines that doubled back to continue the spiral. With each circle of the spiral, I realized, I was moving further away from my original choice to pursue an academic career—not in the sense that my decisions were taking me away from that path, but I felt myself moving further and further away from the reasons that motivated the choice, despite the fact that I was living the choice. The solid sphere in the middle represented my decision to go to graduate school, and then the spiral around it represented each academic year. The wavey and straight lines were bumpy time frames within my academic career, or moments when I made shifts. Finally, the spiral veered off on a completely new path.
I reflected on this for a while, because to many, my choice to leave academia seemed sudden; in reality, it was a long time coming. I wanted to step away when I finished my MA, and again in my second year of the PhD, and again in the 3rd, 4th, 5th year… it was a pervasive feeling long before I graduated.
As I became increasingly unhappy and burned out once I was in a tenure-track faculty position, I also found that the life I was living was not in alignment with the original choice that I made. Academia was not what I thought it was when I started an MA program, and I realized that I couldn’t change it, or stick it out while waiting for it to change. I wasn’t cut out to try to “change the system from within” and my daily struggle to get out of bed and feed myself, take care of myself, was evidence of that fact. The last time I felt that bad, I was in my PhD program, trying to keep myself together in the middle of a mental break. (I think if I were in a Victorian novel, they would’ve called it a nervous breakdown, or hysteria.)
I couldn’t see my way to continuing in the spiral, so I veered off in a new direction. I got a job working part time at a small independent bookstore. I started teaching yoga. I took a lot of editing jobs. I designed and offered writing workshops. I offered “marketing” services to people. I offered writing coaching. I felt so much relief, leaving academia.
I felt a lot of grief while I was making the decision, and a lot of fear because I didn’t know what to do, next. I knew, though, that something had to change and that I couldn’t keep pushing myself, day after day, to live a life that wasn’t what I wanted. Five years after leaving graduate school, and shortly after I received tenure, I resigned. I stayed on another year to adjunct, just to keep some income, and then realized I couldn’t keep going, divided between the academic and non-academic worlds.
Two years and a few months after that change, and I’m finding myself in a struggle, again. Finances are tight. Work is tiring. Monetizing my skills is not something I want to do, or have the energy to do. I feel like I’m not made for this world; I’m put together incorrectly to thrive in it, and surviving is taking more and more effort every day.
I wouldn’t take back my decision to leave academia, but sometimes, I wish I’d been made in a way that would’ve allowed me to stick it out. Over the past few months, I’ve met people here who are still in that world, and I’ve found myself uncertain about what to say about my past. In one instance, when I said, “I was a professor in another life” a friend said, “Remember, he’s still in that life,” as if I shouldn’t say anything about why I left. I felt embarrassed, as if being truthful, being myself, was inappropriate. In other instances, I’ve mentioned my past so that people I’m talking to know that I understand what they’re talking about (for example, I know what comp/rhet is). And then I wish I hadn’t said anything, because it opens a door to a conversation I don’t want to have.
Aside from that, there’s the reality that my stretch as a college professor was the only one in my life where I was financially secure. I had a savings account. I had money to travel. I didn’t have to worry very much about unexpected expenses. And now, every $50 I earn (or don’t) makes a huge difference in my financial situation. A long drive up into the mountains is not a “free” activity, but one I have to plan because of the cost of a tank of gas.
I don’t think staying in academia was worth it for me, for my mental health, and I probably would’ve been fired by now anyway since I wasn’t on good terms with the administration at my college. But things outside of academia aren’t perfect or easy, either.
I’m tired, worried about my ability to pay bills, and I’m finding myself in a depression cycle, again. So when I talk to folks about my change of career, sometimes there’s a twinge of shame, a feeling of irresponsibility, and a feeling of “not-good-enough” because I had the means to be secure, and I couldn’t handle it.
I say this as a statement of fact, not a point to be refuted.
I could have stuck it out, and forced myself through like I had so many times before, but that way of living just wasn’t working anymore. So I made a change, went after my dreams, tried to build a life that feels more authentic and manageable.
And still, here I am, struggling again. I don’t think I made the wrong choice in leaving academia. And still, I don’t know what to do now.
I don’t know where I am, on the spiral. I don’t know where I am, in terms of living a life that I want. I don’t know, truly, if that life even exists, in the world as it is.
I’m trying to write myself to a point, and it isn’t forthcoming.
Maybe part of the point is that there isn’t one. And that I’ll just keep going, anyway, as I try to figure it out.
Ink and Vein 