Self Improvement
A community which focusses on improving yourself. This can be in many different ways - from improving physical health or appearance, to improving mental health, creating better habits, overcoming addictions, etc.
While material circumstances beyond our control do govern much of our daily lives, people do have agency and choices to make, whether that is as "simple" as disciplining yourself to not doomscroll, to as complex as recreating yourself to have many different hobbies and habits.
This is not a place where all we do is talk about improving "productivity" (in a workplace context) and similar terms and harmful lifestyles like "grindset". Self-improvement here is intended to make you a generally better and happier person, as well as a better communist, and any other roles you may have in your life.
Rules and guidelines:
- Posts should be about self-improvement. This is obviously a wide category, and can range from advice, to finding resources, to self-posts about needing to improve in a certain area, or how you have improved, and many other things.
- Use content warnings when discussing difficult subjects.
- Do not make medical decisions solely because of a discussion you have had with any person here (e.g. whether to take or not take medications; diagnoses; etc.) as we do not vet people. All medical problems should be discussed with a real-life medical professional.
- Do not post harmful advice here. If this is seen, then please report it and we shall remove it. If you are unsure about whether it's precisely harmful advice or not but feel uneasy about it, please report it anyway.
- Do not insult other users and their lifestyles or their habits (unless they ask, I suppose). This is a place for self-improvement. Critique and discussion about a course of action is encouraged over shit-flinging. Don't talk down to people.
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why would academia be running away if its intellectually stimulating and its what you're interested in and can pay the bills?
I could see it not being a viable career path if there just aren't enough jobs to go around, but it seems like maybe you've counted it out for no real reason
Yeah, I should definitely have specified - I made it sound like I had an academic position lined up or something - I would be applying at PhD level if I wanted to get back in, and they don't hand out a lot of those where I am. There are also a lot of reasons I don't want to try to get back to academia. Terrible working conditions, publishing pressure, academic politics, no job guarantee at all, and the knowledge that the extremely specialized work you do will only ever be useful to other specialists - if even them. I very seriously considered this path when I finished my MA (had some attention, some professors nudging me to try), and all my friends who went that way are in situations I'm not envious of right now (except maybe in the sense that they get to sound "smart" and I don't).
The right wing brain rot in this country has spread far and wide. If you work in the public sector or academia, you might as well be all the awful shit Elon talks about
I don't think that OP is in the US. But I guess its a similar story everywhere
I didn't really explain very well why I don't want to work in academia (calling it "running away" kind of suggests I could get a job in academia - not a guarantee at all with my experience etc), but jumping straight to attributing my choices to "right wing brainrot" is a bit dramatic, don't you think?
My apologies, I’m just describing the zeitgeist