What I have to say may come across as harsh but I only intend it to be helpful. If you invested in projects, and the investments did not pay off, I see three l

What I have to say may come across as harsh but I only intend it to be helpful. If you invested in projects, and the investments did not pay off, I see three likely explanations. First, maybe your investment function is miscalibrated. Second, maybe your investment function is well calibrated but your time horizon is too long. Third, maybe you are unlucky. I have no insights into what happened in your case, I don't even know what field your are in. But, case 1 suggests you may be unsuccessful in academia. Case 2 suggests possible success after adjustment to more immediate reward. Case three suggests possible success after a difficult recovery process and further investments. None are ideal paths but cases 2 and 3 suggest possible recovery strategies if you are deeply committed to academia. The optimality of such an approach is highly subjective. You likely should not feel like academia is the only available path, if you do that is a red flag that something is amiss.