Inflection Point

I find myself at an inflection point so it seems to be a perfect time to re-dedicate myself to writing in this self authorship journal. This is a journal just for me now as there is no way for the public eye to see it. Maybe one day I’ll open it up? Or perhaps I’ll take all the “self authorship” tagged posts and compile them, but for now, locked down. 

Why an inflection point? I think the end of my PhD journey has hit me with a bit of a back hand. What I mean by that is that for the past four years I was so dedicated to sprinting toward the finish line that I never considered what might happen when I hit the finish line tape. I feel like I’m lost. No purpose. No meaning. Not sure of where I stand at work at all, and a bit awash at home too. 

At work I want to take a huge step back. I’ve already mentioned this to my boss. I would rather act as a consultant that a direct operational manager. I don’t like my boss’s methods and manner. I don’t like his allies at all. Cammie especially is a mess. I’ve had enough of being Switzerland in the culture war there. We shall see if that idea of being a consultant works out or not. I know that I have a PhD he wants. He’s told me I can remain at whatever level for as long as I want. Let’s see if his words have weight or not. Presently I see a future of facilitation and instructional design combined with sales. Easy and should be fun to do.

At home I have lost purpose too. I find myself picking things up just to try them on. Picking up the piano again. It’s fun. I do that for 30 minutes a day without fail. Last year I did over 100 days straight, a streak, of Spanish language practice. I’ve picked that up again too. I’m on day 28 of my latest streak. Every morning I try to wake up and write at least 500 words in my novel. I’m at 15K words and it’s a good story. 

But there’s also a milddle ground. Something in my life that is somewhere between work and these purely personal projects. Last summer I sent an article on a subset of my data from my dissertation to a peer-reviewed journal called “Interactive Learning Systems.” That little paper has been stuck at “review stage” for the past 6 months. That’s good I suppose. I sent another paper, this one a qualitative study on PO Fit and our industry to a fifth peer-reviewed journal the other day. It’s been rejected so often I’m not sure it will ever be published. Finally, I’m trying to write another paper just on my dissertation findings. My professor said our dissertations should produce at least five different articles for peer-reviewed journals. I’m hoping to get that published too. 

Why? 

I have no clue. My boss doesn’t care about these publications. For some reason I do. It’s another challenge to meet. Maybe, in the long term, all of these personal projects, the novel, the piano, etc. combined with the psuedao academic project of being published in a peer-reviewed journal will be enough to help satisfy what has been lost by finishing the PhD. 

My roommate thinks it is a mid-life crisis. I think I had my mid-life crisis about 10 years back and that this is something new brought on by the loss of a goal that had been a huge part of my life for four years. The sudden end of an era.

Time for a new era.