> There are jobs that I can do certainly, but very few that I’ve thought would given me the internal satisfaction of what academia used to give me (and I think

> There are jobs that I can do certainly, but very few that I’ve thought would given me the internal satisfaction of what academia used to give me (and I think could give me again). My comment is not meant to be advice-column material, but I get the impression that as long as you think that “[there are] very few [jobs] that I’ve thought would give me the internal satisfaction of what academia used to give me," you are unlikely to resolve or leave behind your current frustration. This is not an invitation to try all the jobs for which you might be qualified, but until you have tried some of them, you cannot know. Before I left academia, although I was a fairly well-rounded person in general, looking back at what I thought at the time, I didn't have a clue about the tech industry, the private sector, the tools used, the money I could make, the weekends spent doing things that weren't trying again to run a simulation model that no one was interested in anyway. But, as I said in another comment, it's like listening to someone say "I'll never find a man like him again" while you think that that man, who you know, is for you in the bottom 15% of men with IQ>70. You are incredulous, you can't understand how someone could say that, but here we are. She has to broaden her perspective to understand what you now know, and all the words said in the meantime will be forgotten, like wind in the pines.