Equating the job with one’s identity. It’s a recognizable hazard inherent in many occupations. When you spend so many years training and doing, at some point you just ‘become’. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, to live and breathe your job. Part of me finds the process completely natural and organic. Because maybe you enjoy it so much that it’s what you do and who you are. Yet deep down inside, another part of me has always resisted this metamorphosis. I’ve been worried throughout my whole career about being enveloped into a world that I sometimes loathe. Of which I’m deeply critical. I don’t like to let things bleed across boundaries either, taking every effort to separate my two worlds – the professional and the private. I want to keep a healthy distance to preserve my identity, not to have it completely shaped or defined by my vocation.
Once again, a paradox quickly emerges. I’m on the inside of the academy, living the professor’s life (reluctantly), yet at the same time wanting to escape. Pursuing something with a deeper meaning and personal value.
Have I always succeeded in keeping the two worlds apart? Of course not. Because it’s not so clear-cut a division. And often, the enjoyment that comes from teaching, research, and administrative work within the university consumes various hours of the day. At least in terms of occupying time in the mind. It’s nice to be so passionate about work that it defines you, defines the way you think, the way you make decisions, the way you act and behave, how you spend your time, etc.
Up to a point.
There’s no doubt that work changes you, despite any opposing force. This reality makes it hard to leave the academy entirely. It’s so much of what I do that I don’t know much otherwise. But I’m changing, trying to change anyhow, making an effort to expand my horizons beyond the world that I currently inhabit. I’m becoming increasingly mindful of this paradox, working my way through the withdrawal symptoms to the point where I know that I’ll be okay doing anything else. Doing so, however, means taking a leap of faith from the known into the unknown. It means shedding parts of my identity, so deeply ingrained from decades of action and disciplinary practice. It’s both a transformation and transition.
The mere prospect of walking away risks erasing a part of my identity. But this is precisely what I’m rallying against – the idea that ‘I am what I do’ and nothing else. The notion that I’d be ‘lost without it’. Because in truth, I have a unique set of experiences from working in universities these past few decades. And I know there are plenty more experiences awaiting me outside the academy. I don’t want to keep operating from a deficit, from a position of fear, which really only serves to paralyze me and keep me in the comfort zone of what I currently know and understand.
Of course I’ll miss it. Parts of it anyhow. Probably very small parts. Lots will be quickly and even immediately forgotten. Pursuing new opportunities is only a good thing, in my opinion. I’ve already let go of some integral components. I haven’t taught in years, for example, and I don’t miss it. My research agenda has slowed down considerably. It’s also changed enough that I no longer attend the same conferences, or relate to the same group of people with whom I’ve been engaged for so many years. That is, I feel there is less to lose at this point because I’ve already reached a certain level of acceptance. The gulf is continually widening between who I was as a career academic and who I feel I’m becoming.
I’m pursuing a career transition. Aggressively at times. The change feels significant to me, especially at this point in my life. I don’t know where it will lead, but what I do know is this: it needs to happen. Of this I’m certain. I like to think that nothing will be lost in the end. Rather, everything I’ve done and gained in my chosen career has prepared me for whatever comes next.