I'm posting this to organise my ideas, and to have a sounding board. I'm currently employed as a lecturer (assistant professor) in the UK (Northern Ireland) and I am quitting on the 31st of January 2017. My wife is taking up a position as a lecturer in the UK (Scotland) on the 1st of July 2016. The thing I just can't make a decision on is what I want/have to do after the 31st January 2017.
A bit of context here. Every single year, I like it less and less to be a researcher. The demands are through the roof - excel at teaching! publish excellent papers! get massive grants! - with no respect at all for personal life. We've coped with it for a long time, but we have reached our breaking point. My wife and I haven't lived together in the last 4 years because we are both in different research areas that always happen to be in different universities (Canada/Belgium, Canada/UK, Ireland/UK). This puts a tremendous strain on our personal life (we can't start a family unless we start a new company called "baby-in-a-box"), and it leads to some ridiculous expenses (two houses, two utility bills, plenty of transportation costs, etc). Around December, I was home for three weeks with a burnout. Things improved again in January though as my wife got her offer letter, I was able to pick a quitting date - as we call it, a finally-living-together-again date - and some of the uncertainty was removed from our lives.
The thing is that I got my MSc and PhD after working in a company at the end of my BSc. This was a dumb, stupid programming job which I loathed and which motivated me to continue with my studies. For those reasons I'm a bit skeptical for going back to industry. On the one hand, it's probably a lot better with an MSc and PhD in hand (in computer science!), but on the other hand I don't really know if I like the company culture. Staying on as a researcher doesn't seem to be an option either. Competition is fierce, and for everyone getting a lecturer position there is a huge stack of bodies they had to crawl over to get there. And they preferably do not have a wife or drag her along. Plus, I don't particularly like my job anymore.
This puts me in this rather awkward situation. Do I simply take a(n extended) career break? Financially we can easily cope with just one income and still save 40-50%. While I'm not the greatest DIY person, it would allow us to buy a house in Scotland and fix it up ourselves to cut costs. It would also allow me to explore some of my own ideas. Do I want to start a company of my own? In what, and how do I make it successful? Do I finally want to pick up on writing books? Do I finally want to get through my Japanese studies? The alternative is of course to look for work. Maybe research (although I want less than 30 min commute, no leeway there anymore), industry will easily pay me twice what I earn now, or I can pick up part-time teaching jobs (which is the one thing about my job which I really like).
How are things looking financially? Pretty good, and nothing to complain about. We own a house worth about £80,000 (though we expect we will need to pay 50-100% more for a house in Scotland), about £85,000 in investments, we will be saving up £20,000 this year, and we will be retrieving our pension contributions from Ireland so that should give us some windfall. Getting a loan for a new house might be tricky though, so the plan would be to get a loan before my quitting date. We can easily afford the payments and due to having two dogs it's probably easier if we first get a new house before putting the old one on the market.
Overall, I'm really torn here. I like to see the money keep on rolling in, but a career break escape sounds soooo nice ...
