1st battleversary: leaving a predefined but uncertain path to find my own Iakgai

5 min readJan 28, 2022

“do your best and let the world do the rest”

A friend of mine just sent me a work anniversary on LinkedIn. At first, got a little bit scared; I did not realize it had already passed one year, one year since I have launched my very first course online, one year since I have set myself into the path of trying to find a job fit. Not saying that before the time would pass slower, but when you are on a predefined path, you can always use that as sign of accomplishment, since you may say you better than you colleague. How can I measure my own progress now? I have the feeling that this issue is omnipresent to any freelancer.

So far, never really thought about it this way, things seemed to be tough, but magically working out to me; it was tough, but fun. Somehow, the fun got away, and remained just the toughness of the academic world. I had a brightness in my eyes that lost somewhere, maybe in some country out there, maybe tore apart by bad relationships with advisors.

I wish I could say things are ease, they are not. The challenges are daily. Challenges goes from personal to professional. Once I heard people are happier when they have to face every single day individually; how much can we reall predict into the future?

Just found this talk, and appeared at the right time:

Comfort Kills Creativity, Samer Fouad. Talk argues on the importance of fighting for our call even though all the setbacks of life.

One question I keep asking myself is how much money do we need, as so it does interfere with our decisions? which includes dedicating to a project you enjoy (e.g., writing), but that provides you no financial stability. The commonest solution to scarcity is doing more. Missing something, just buy one more, just work more for having more money. Would it really be THE solution?

This talk also called my attention:

Quit Your Day Job and Live Out Your Dreams by Dr. Ken Atchity. Interview discusses the biggest monster we all face when trying to change career: fear.

This question I am doing has to do with happiness. According to this talk, you should not pursue happiness, which seems to create a paradox: the more you look for happiness, the lesser you have it, and more disappointed you will be.

Don’t chase happiness. Become antifragile | Tal Ben-Shahar | Big Think. Talk argues on the importance of not looking for happiness directly, like not looking at the sun directly.

Indeed, I have seen a pattern: whenever I wanted to be happy, it backfired. The best moments of my life in general were somehow random. I was just doing my things, and before I noticed, I have living one of the moments of my life. As soon as I gained conscious, tried to control, to keep, and it was gone. Can I really control happiness in work? maybe not. That is one thing I fear when I set myself on the path to find job fit.

Background

Not a big fan of explaining things, since most likely we have no idea why we do what we do; we may find several explanations, some quite convincing; we have what some calls objective ignorance. Further, others argue our brain has natural ability to make up histories. It is quite easy to make sense of the randomness as reasonable.

Since my PhD, I did somehow what I wanted, therefore, no need to make radical changes; it is possible that I did without perceiving, naturally. However, since my postdoc, things got complicated; not sure the true reasons. My first postdoc was a nightmare, did the formalities, finished, but it was quite stressful. The second, a little better, but still quite stressful. When you HAVE to do something, I feel people may respond differently. For me, it is quite stressful, it becomes meaningless. Somehow, I was able to until my PhD to find the equilibrium between challenges and my internal peace; not saying it was ease, but when you work on your stuff, you are more motivated to overcome setbacks. Cannot explain how that works, but the challenges become somehow more bearable.

Why now?

My issues with the academic world started in the undergrad, but somehow, I was able to make living bearable, and found pleasure on the path; several people around me had more difficulties; others adopted their own techniques that made their living also bearable. In my case, tried to concentrate on big challenges. Concentrating on big challenges made my life easier to handle, made my difficulties easier to swallow. The curious about life is that the past always seems better than the present, and the future, but still when we were there, we could not wait for the future; maybe the fact that the past cannot be changed is our biggest unconscious comfort.

Why is different now?

Previously, when I gave a break, I always kept writing to the academic world, always a paper under review or on the way, or an academic path on the horizon; now, I am not even trying anything, decided to concentrate on something new, something different; now, I am writing to Amazon and this site, as an independent writer. Do I feel bad? in fact, yes. Do not take me wrong, I love researching, I love learning, just have difficulties with how it works, as so you can stay in the academic world; no intention to offend anyone, but it is the way the academic world works, how people decide what is important and not, which research to fund or not, creativity work and more. It is hard for me to live every day, now that I come to think about it, it has never been ease, why would it be now?

My issues with the academic world

Since undergrad, it bothered me how the academic world can be so academic, living a separate reality. Now, with more experience, I even more sure of it. The worse is that if someone from the academic world read this article, chances are pretty high they will disagree, and with no out-of-academic argumentation; I mean, accept that they are just protecting a job, but using a big image, the ideia of intellectual, to get paid. For me the academic world is just a fancee way to get paid, without adimiting; nothing against get paid;