But What If I Quit

[rynling]

This morning I submitted my file for tenure. The American university tenure system is difficult to explain, but what this essentially means is that I put myself up for promotion. If I get promoted, nothing much happens, but I get to keep my job. If I don’t get promoted, I lose my job and my career is more or less finished, meaning that the past ten years of my life will have been wasted. This seems like it would be a lot of pressure, but it’s really not. My tenure file is solid, for one thing, and academic job searches are so hellish and demanding that I don’t think anyone would fire me simply because of the soul-draining annoyance of having to go through the ordeal of hiring someone else. I’m also not the sort of person who makes enemies, so I don’t think anyone in my university or professional field is, like, out to sabotage me or anything. If everything works the way it’s supposed to – and there’s no reason it shouldn’t – I’ll be fine.

But I don’t think I’m happy. The amount of work I’m doing isn’t sustainable, and I can’t really afford to continue living in Washington DC. This is usually the point at which people in academia go back on the job market, but the academic job market is… You know what, let’s just say it’s “dystopian” and leave it at that. So what if, instead of trying to negotiate a new contract, I just quit?

The first thing I would do would be to move to Philadelphia.

The second thing I would do would be to launch a Patreon and open commissions.

The third thing I would do would be to start self-publishing on Amazon. I've been reading a lot about how this works, and it's making more and more sense to me, especially now that I can easily say that some of my favorite books written during the past several years have been self-published on Amazon.

The fourth thing I would do would be to get in touch with my publishing contacts and start taking on translation work. The pay isn’t great, but the demand for people at my level is high.

The fifth thing I would do would be to have friends again. When I think about how I actually used to have real-life friends four years ago, I cry kind of a lot, which is happening more and more these days.

I’m not saying this would be easy, and I’m not saying it would be comfortable, but I do think it might be worth it in the long run. I used to be so idealistic and optimistic about higher education, but I’m not so sure anymore. I’m actually starting to be convinced that this entire system is grossly unethical, not just in an abstract and theoretical sense but also in terms of specific instances of systematic injustice that I have seen with my own eyes and been powerless to do anything about.

And let’s be real, I’m not someone who claims that they’re A Writer™ but doesn’t actually write anything. In addition to the book and dozens of articles I’ve published professionally, I also managed to write (and edit!) two novels and more than fifty short stories during the past four years. Seriously, here's a link to my account on AO3. I might not be the brightest witch of my generation, but I’m doing okay.

And you know what? There’s no reason I couldn’t be doing better.

Comments

[lassarina]

There is indeed no reason you couldn't be doing better! I wish you the best in reshaping your life to better fit your goals and needs.

Because of who I am as a person, I'm just going to say that you'd want to try to hang onto a year's worth of cushion as you're getting started (or see if you can overlap, side-hustling your way into the future plan while you stick it out teaching for a bit longer?) but I am paranoid and panicky about making sure I can pay rent, so take this with an entire salt mine.

[rynling]

I'm just going to say that you'd want to try to hang onto a year's worth of cushion as you're getting started

I'd like to push back against this a little, if you don't mind. I don't mean any disrespect to you personally, of course, but this is something I've been thinking about.

If we can say that a minimum "year's worth of cushion" is $30,000, then it would take me about seven years at my current rate of saving and debt repayment to put that much money together. And this is assuming that nothing major (good or bad) happens in my life in seven years, that the rent I'm paying now and the rent I would be paying in Philadelphia won't rise in seven years, and that the cost of living in either of these major urban centers doesn't increase in seven years.

Essentially, what this sort of advice boils down to is "don't follow your dreams unless you're independently wealthy."

Which, I mean, is a real thing. This is why it's fun to dream about doing something like this but not actually do it. I'm an adult, and I'm not going to quit my job on a whim. Although, if I don't get tenure,

That being said, I think there has a course of action somewhere between "quit your job and go into soul-crushing debt forever" and "let life pass you by for the sake of financial security." This is one extreme, and I'm going to try to back-pedal my way to a place that's a bit more realistic. "Being a writer" is a job just like any other, and I think the first order of business is to figure out how the industry actually works. Because who knows? It's difficult to imagine, but it might be even more depressing than my day job, and academia may one day be the shelter I need from having to deal with the bullshit of the publishing industry.

Still, it's nice to dream sometimes.

[lassarina]

That is very valid push-back, and I apologize: I got my anxiety related to housing/affordability/security on you, and that was not good of me. Thank you. My thoughts sort of went to "how long it takes to get paid for fiction" vs "cost of living in a city" and it happened to hit a particular strain of my crazy that was highly activated during the period I was laid off.

I've been reading a lot on the matter of when to quit the day-job, as it were (some good thoughts have been posted by Jim C. Hines, who does an annual round-up of what he's making from various sources including self-pub, and from Chuck Wendig among others), and I do recommend looking them up if you want to pursue this more seriously--they had, to my mind, very solid thoughts on what markers to look at if one is going the full time writing thing.

I apologize again for being overbearing and unrealistic.

[runicmagitek]

lassarina more or less said everything I wanted to say. I want nothing but the best for you and I hope you take steps in the right direction for making you happy. Academia seems like a bag of dicks, though it's also terrifying to look at the other alternatives when there's a smaller paycheck attached to them. I know I'm the sort of person who needs to make spreadsheets for spreadsheets before I dive into unknown territory, even more so when money is involved. Whatever you choose to do, I'm rooting for you! ♥