Reasons I want out #1: I want options

Life Coach is encouraging me, before I rush forward into figuring out what comes next in my life to deal with the feelings that are coming up about (probably) leaving academia. As the intellectual I've become, I want to leapfrog over my emotions and get straight to the point: what now? But I think I need to give my intuition and my Inner Child, both of which I've kept locked up and sedated for years, a chance to take the lead. What is exciting? What is fun? What is a little scary or risky? (Writing a novel. Starting a theater company. Teaching English overseas. Doing a conservation internship in some gorgeous place. Etc...) I know those things will emerge of their own accord, in their own time, so right now I'm going to focus on why I'm (most likely) leaving academia, and how I feel about it by listing Reasons I Want Out.

Reason #1: I want options

Academia demands a lot of sacrifice and compromise. It's not just a job, its like a spouse, or entering the priesthood, or joining the military. You go where you they tell you, do what you have to do, and hopefully its all worth it to you. This may be fine if you can't see yourself doing anything else with your life, but that's not the case for me. I can see myself doing other things, a variety of other things, in fact.

Location is important to me. All my family are in another part of the country. I am the little outlier point on the map, the one who landed farthest from the tree. I am currently single and mobile, I can choose where I want to settle, no spouse/tenure tying me down. I get to choose.

An academic career, on the other hand, is like throwing a dart at a map. Wherever the dart lands, thats where you go and STAY. Its much harder in an academic career to move somewhere you want to be because there are so few jobs, especially in certain fields. This is also scary because say you get a coveted tenure-track job at an institution that, too late, you discover to be a toxic place. Because its hard to get out of a toxic institution/department, especially if you are tenured or tenure-track, people tend to stay and wither, get bitter and resentful, the environment gets even more toxic. You feel trapped. My department at Prestigious U is one such place, divided by politics and grudges, where students who get caught in the middle are jettisoned from the program after having uprooted their lives and moved (sometimes with significant others) to a new city to study. Very scary stuff.

So there it is. I want to be able to choose where I work, with whom, and for whom. I don't want to be stuck somewhere I don't want to be just because I have tenure or because there are no jobs.