I had nearly forgotten about this blog until I got a notification for a new comment on an old post. So of course I spent a few hours reading through it, and got to a post that asked my future self to write and tell past me if everything turned out okay. So I thought I’d update this to say. . .
It did!
It’s been ten years since I decided not to pursue an academic career and almost seven years since I taught my last class, and I could not be happier with the decision I made. F.B. and I are still living in the town where he got a job (and eventually tenure – yay F.B.!). I was accepted into the social work program here, interned at the university, got a job as a therapist at the non-profit I had been volunteering for, and after a little over two years got my license and switched to private practice. I am now in a job that I really genuinely love and have no intention of leaving any time soon.
There have been a few pleasant surprises along the way. The biggest one is what a different person I am and feel like when I’m doing work that I feel genuinely suited for. I did do a decent job as an academic (although I never read my diss again after filing because I am sure it is deeply embarrassing) and a damn good job as a teacher despite never feeling naturally good at either. I made it happen but it came at the cost of so much energy and anxiety. I taught for over ten years and every time I walked into a classroom I felt an overwhelming sense of dread about things going wrong. That doesn’t with therapy. Therapy feels like it matches the way my brain works. Even when I feel confused or worry I did something wrong it almost always comes with a confidence that I will figure it out and be able to repair the situation if I need to, or that I’m just a human with human flaws. I really didn’t know I could feel this way with my job and it’s really, really good.
Another is how useful my Ph.D. and academic experience has been in this career. I felt underprepared when I started doing therapy in my internship, but I quickly realized that I was really good at finding themes and nuances in what clients were telling me and that being able to explore those offered understanding and healing. That was, I’m sure, a direct result of all of my practice with literary analysis – I was basically doing close readings of what clients shared with me. I am also lucky enough to live in a college town where my post-academic status is a strong selling point for people who want a therapist who understands academia or because they are thinking of leaving themselves. I don’t even think of myself as a former academic anymore, both because being an academic feels like a lifetime ago and because it does feel like my academic experience feeds into this work.
I also want to tell my past self to relax about whether she’s too old to be making this change. Now in my early 40s I have zero feelings about that. Ten years ago I felt that if I wanted to be a therapist I should have figured that out sooner and not wasted so much time on another career path. Now that I am a practicing therapist, I feel strongly that it greatly benefited me and my clients to start this work later in life. In my early/mid 20s, I barely even knew myself. I have always been interested in this work, but I don’t know how I could have helped others find and accept their core selves at a time when I was so uncertain of my own.
There have also been challenges along the way. Beyond a lot of fear and doubt, which was to be expected, I burned out hard at my non-profit job and didn’t feel like a normal version of myself again until about a year after leaving, largely thanks to a wonderfully supportive supervisor and lots of individual and couples therapy. But I learned so much from that experience and am grateful for the work that I was able to do there, so I don’t regret it at all.
So that’s probably it! The end! Of this blog at least. I am grateful for having an excuse to come back here. Reading through this reminded me how much this decision brought me to the edge, emotionally, and I am so so grateful to Past DustBiter for finding a way to tolerate all of that pain, to ride it through to something that is so much better. In many ways, for me, it would have been easy to stay with what was familiar, to not take this enormous risk. But taking that risk has allowed me to live a life that is purposeful, rich, and fascinating. As Jack Kornfield so beautifully reminds us, “The trouble is, you think you have time.” Thank you to the part of me that saw through this and held on to the belief that a truly fulfilling life is worth fighting for.