I'm not planning to join the CIA, but I am considering new identities. I moved home from Cambridge a year ago, which was a year after I graduated. Am I still an academic? The answer is: sort of. I've kept presenting at Victorianist conferences; heck, in November, I participated in a hilarious staged reading of a melodrama of Jane Eyre, in which I played Mr. Rochester! I spend some hours at the library each week, theoretically working on a variety of articles and the aforementioned conference papers. I also spend more hours on my paying editing jobs.
I knew the state of academia before I started my PhD, and I've never felt that being a professor was the only thing I could possibly enjoy. Nevertheless, trying to figure out what alternate career would be intellectually stimulating enough to keep me engaged day after day is proving a challenge. I apply selectively to jobs that seem to fit the bill, and generally get no interest -- even when I'm extremely (over?) qualified. The silence is maddening, in no small part because you don't know where you stand.
So it has gone for much of the last year. Recently, though, I got some nibbles of interest -- some from academic quarters, and some from the techie world where I've been learning the ropes. That has re-energized me enormously. My dual life continues for now; I even made double-sided business cards: one side representing my work as an "independent scholar," and one as an editor. No fake beards required as yet!
