Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? —Mary Oliver
Recently, I can not stop thinking about what is the ideal lifestyle for me? Yeah I am thinking about my future now. This is because I started to feel that something is still missing about my academic job, while feeling the same about those promising industrial jobs. So what do I want? Or what makes me feel happy, motivated, meaningful and peaceful everyday when I wake up and go to bed?
First of all, I am very grateful about my academic job which allows me to experience the highest level of freedom and autonomy in work so far. However, I can still not decide when, how and what is my output, except following the writing format for journal publication, and teaching structure for students (I do not feel connected with the way I am able to teach in the university so far, e.g. I do not have priority yet to redesign a new course and a new way of teaching). In other words, I still do not have agency to make things happen or the type of change I want to have, regardless of the efforts I am putting into.
Just by the fact that I am writing this blog (as a type of output I would like to have) without being asked by anyone, I know that I enjoy having high level of agency. Interestingly, having a high of agency (the capability and the resourcs to fullfil something that I am satisfied about as output) is not the same as having a high level of freedom or autonomy, if we simply define freedom as to have lots of spare time, autonomy as who decides what to do (we are free in the process and pace).
I stumpled on this important distinction while discussing with ChatGPT, which can explain why I still feel like missing something, despite the high level of freedom and autonomy I am grateful about at the moment. This is not simply a difference between choosing existing industrial or academical job, it is more about gaining more agency in my life, e.g. the type of output and impact that I wish to have.