What’s next?
Let’s start with the news. I’ve resigned from my job as a tenured professor.
As I’ve slowly delivered this information to friends and colleagues over the past week, I’ve noticed a pattern in their reactions. First, there’s the requisite shock. I’m good at my job. I’ve earned tenure, won teaching awards, published a book as well as articles in top journals, and I am generally respected by my colleagues. Plus, who gives up tenure? Tenure is your ticket to being set for life. We work so hard to get there in our academic careers that it seems almost foolhardy, or at least unthinkable, to give it all up.
After the shock comes the inevitable question: What are you going to do?
I anticipated this question well before I’d fully committed to resigning. At first, I wanted to avoid the question all together. I’ve always been a planner, a person who seeks instructions and structure. When I arrive at a hotel, the first thing I do is read the informational book about all the amenities and services. I always know my next step, especially when making life-changing decisions. Academia makes it easy for us planners because it sets out a clear path to success in the field. You take classes, research and write a dissertation, get a university job, follow their tenure guidelines, get tenure, get promoted to full professor, and live out the rest of your days secure in your job. These steps aren’t easy, but they’re clear instructions for how to move up and forward in the field.
I feared the “what’s next” question because I had no idea how to answer it. I had not yet found a way to articulate my ideas in a language that would be intelligible in our meritocratic, capitalist system. This system defines people’s value and worth based on what we do — not for pleasure but for money. When people ask what I’ll do, they mean what job will I do next, what will I do for pay. Yet, what’s next for me is a way of being that has no easy translation into our job-driven world. How does one articulate a feeling, a sense of living, into an intelligible answer to “What’s next”?
My soul has been trying to tell me that I need to resign for a long time. More and more, I’ve come to see academia as a system that relies on overwork, oneupmanship (and I use the term “man” purposefully because it’s still a field dominated by masculine ideologies of success and good work), and competition for scarce resources. My soul needs something different.
I came to this realization after many years of conversations with close friends, experiments with changing my day-to-day responsibilities, counseling, medication, meditation, and niggling feelings of dissatisfaction and unhappiness. Through all of this soul-searching, I’ve come to understand that I must make a change because my inner life depends on it. I need to stop. I need to slow down. I need to sit and listen for what calls. I need to be free to think and follow my instincts when I feel the creative sparks pressing at my subconscious. I must make space to reconnect with myself so that I can hear the whispers of the universe guiding me toward what’s next.
I do not plan to jump directly into another paid job.
Before I continue, I must recognize the immense privileges that allow me to make this kind of choice. I have an incredibly supportive partner with a paying job and enough savings from work and family money to enable me to exit the world of paid work for a short period of time. While I envision doing some freelance writing projects during this time, I also know that in the short term our family’s health and well-being does not depend on my paid work. Not everyone can make this choice, and I plan to use my newfound freedom to empower others through writing and work in the community.
When it was finally time for me to take the leap into the unknown, I began responding to “what’s next” questions with some version of “Nothing” or “I don’t know.” But neither response felt right. I do know what I’m going to do, and it’s far from nothing. I’m going to live life. I’m going to experiment and experience everything I can. I’m going to create and witness and see what comes of it. So while I won’t have a job title or even a steady income (serious gulp!), I’ll be committing myself to the work of grieving the career I’ve left behind, deconstructing my accomplishment-driven self, and creating the life I so desperately want to live. A true capitalist might construe this as essentially doing nothing. We’re supposed to work hard. Any work not for pay doesn’t count. I might be seen as being lazy, an unforgivable sin in a capitalist system. Thus, the idea that I’ll be doing nothing may be true in the capitalist sense, but it’s also entirely wrong. I won’t be doing nothing. I’ll be creating my life.
The “I don’t know” response is also related to my socialization into a capitalist system that doesn’t recognize any unpaid work. But it’s also related to how I, like many women, devalue and dismiss my own intuitions and ideas. Even though I know what I’m going to do, it took me a while to find a way to explain my sense of a new life. My inner critics had no qualms about telling me how my “plan” sounds flighty, crazy, laughable, unrealistic, dangerous. When I did find the words to describe my ideas, I had to build up the courage to say them. To tell my colleagues meant bringing myself one step closer to leaping headfirst into the unknown. A scary prospect for anyone, but especially for those of us who experience extra doses of anxiety on a daily basis.
Eventually, I found the words and the courage to honestly answer the “what’s next” question. Sometimes I say that I’m going to live life. Other times I say that I’m going to stop and see what calls. I might explain that I’m a writer, and so I’m going to write. Whatever my response, I never revert back to the comfort of “Nothing” or “I don’t know.”
If I’m truly going to live my intentional life, I must start with the truth. I intend to tap into the creative spirit of the universe and wait. I have no idea where that will take me, but I know to my core that it’s what I need to do. Whether or not anyone else understands it, I’ve discovered (uncovered? recovered?) a truth that I cannot ignore. I must live intentionally, focus on what’s life-giving, and count on myself to listen and let what’s calling take me.
It’s been a long process to arrive at the start of a path for which I have no clear map. I feel excited, afraid, curious, uncomfortable, grateful, and probably every other emotion imaginable. For so long, I’ve envied stories about people who upend their entire lives to start anew. Now I’m living that story. I tell my colleagues that I’m not dying. I’ll still be here. I just won’t be there. In fact, I think I’ll be more “here” than I’ve ever been.
