When I was 15 I wrote a word document that was my career plan, and for the next 6 years I followed it more or less exactly. I think it's time to challenge it, and check in with that and how I want my life to go, and where to point myself.
I want this to serve as kinda a manifesto for myself. a direction. maybe ill rename this to 'a crystal of intent for my crown' or some similar mystical-sounding nonsense. i like having intents written down. i find it helpful.
things to watch/read as i make this:
that video about academia
lol this was kinda a crap video and uh i didn't like it one bit but... what can i learn from this?
- unsubscribe from this channel
- i don't wanna do postdocs
- really, really, make sure you have a good supervisor. ive been very lucky so far.
so, no postdocs -> no professorship. so am i doing PhD in something -> industry in that thing + independent research in another?
reasons i want to do a PhD: it's not a real job, it lets me play in science for a while longer, intellectually stimulating. for 'real work' i want to be not-in-academia
from a purely pragmatic point of view, it's easier to do climate science from home/an medphysi job than it is to do medical physics whilst working in climate science. having access to scanners &c... I presume at some point ill stop doing one or the other. at some point i just wanna retire!
things important to me: let's try and rank things as a challenge
- financial and geographical stability
- doing something useful
- not sitting at a computer all day
- intellectual satisfaction
really does seem that clinical medical physicist/whatever it is $prof3 does is ideal...
what does devine lu linvega say? prediction: very anti-career
one para per:
marvelous pursuit: the marvelous pursuit is one that is useless to capital, that is deep and advanced, without use-value or trade-value. it brings only personal satisfaction.
commodity: by making things easy to make and to sell, we remove their value. mass production leaves individuals unable to produce; i can't make any of the things around me which are mass produced.
simulacra: idk, this one was more philosphical and harder to get at. railing against the replacement of authentic living and experience with TV? preoccupied by the occupations of the working- and middle-classes much?
so yeah, i shouldn't have a job. idk, i should live in a boat and do odd-jobs and crafts for a living.
lifestyle:
i guess as an anarchist i should reject this separation ive created between work and lifestyle... and the concept of 'lifestyle' as a whole. this heading means "not work things", or "criteria"
- i wanna sail!
- i wanna be able to log off!
- i wanna be able to organise and to protest!!
- i don't wanna have a smartphone!
- the minimum amount of salaried work, performed unproductively
- i wanna be able to afford gifts and mutual aid/being generous!!
- i wanna have my own place, that i can share, with a garden!
save your best hours for your most important work. for me, my best hours are 07:30-09:30 and 19:00-21:00. so i should start work-work at 10:00 and finish at 18:00... and use my best hours for something else.
more on marvelous pursuits
Alienation, Marvelous Pursuits and the New Nomadic Sciences
this essay is really good, and all about how we spend our time.
idk, i guess despite being an anarchist i don't feel the same drive to Escape or cut loose that lots do. i can manage being inside the system, i know i don't have to be... but it's easier than not. like. for me, "escaping the system" would be using my savings to buy a boat, live off-grid, and make the money i need to buy the things to survive month-to-month from odd jobs, tutoring, and crafts. that just doesn't sit right? it's not what i want to do. i want colleagues, i want to Work On Things. my marvellous pursuit is that applied physics everywhere thing. but my dayjob and my anarchism? idk. idk. idk. idk.
why do i associate sincerely living my anarchist beliefes with going off-grid on a boat? why can't i do it in a city, with a job? i guess the key part is i believe wage labour is bad, and it is. but i can still think that and subject myself to it. do i want to? david graeber did, i wonder why. i guess he found allignment between it and his marvellous pursuit? is that what i should be aiming for. it seems a good goal. i suppose part of me feels it's morally wrong to subject myself to wage labour, i suppose that is why i a) intend to be salaried and b) intend to be a bad employee in the traditional sense. i hope my work is interesting enough that i do it, and do it well, and that i work in a place (nhs ... or any public sector) where pursuit of profit is inverted to pursuit of savings, which is easier to deal with because it's a positive action to resist savings, whereas its a negative action to avoid profit. (idk if that last bit makes sense).
if the incentive is to save money, you don't have to do more. you will be expected to do more with less, but you can't, and i can handle that. whereas if the incentive is to make money, you are expected to do more. i am against productivism/productivity.
hmm... there's something here. if my day job alligns with my marvellous pursuit, and i pursue it unproductively, then all's well and good, no?
can one make their salaried work incidental and in the same direction as the rest of their life? on the one hand, being on the clock and giving up control of the direction of your efforts to a manager/supervisor would suggest not; but if the task you are salaried to do is closely enough alligned, and you are pretty happy to skive and leave early and treat it as incidental, it seems some allignment can be had?
i know i really value my own agency, and of feeling in control of my life and time. i guess part of that is why im making this document. to prefigure what i do, so i can say i have intended it. i need that intent, and i resent being told what to do, or doing things because i was told to/am expected to.
what do i mean by "my" anachism?
if i didn't care about living according to my beliefs (ie, that we should care about the consequences of our actions, and not just resign them as 'somebody else's problem'), then i would go all in on machine learning and generative ai and blockchain and so on. they're really interesting mathematically and physicsally (see this video by 3b1b about diffusion models and diffusion physics), and really impactful! but, alas, they are bubbles and or scams and or enabling the worst excesses of capitalism whilst consuming horrifying amounts of natural resources that we could be using to, idk, live. they are very impactful (derogatory).
i rest happy in the knowledge that there are really interesting, difficult, problems that have good consequences! stuff like enzymes for breaking down polymers (hi colleagues) and so on, and MRI! we should work on those things instead. the physicists writing ml algorithms and implementations should think about where their data is coming from.