It was about my late article, and it has been sent. I am very happy about that and much relieved. It went through four drafts in this space. Self flagellation was progressively removed from it.
My problem is that the politics at work have had me emotionally exhausted for so long. I keep hoping I see light at the end of the tunnel, but I have been wrong so often that in fact hope mourns. I am interested in my work but I have many hours in which it seems that the only true way out of the morass would be to shed my skin, absolve myself of every pending obligation, find a way to forgive myself everything, and go to live by the sea.
I dream of watching the clouds go by and feeling the air move. Waves would lap and roar. I imagine working on some very objective, very interesting, and very useful practical project as a face-to-face team member in a large organization, and hearing the universe click along after hours.
I have this fantasy because I want to escape intellectual isolation and also harassment, and the place where that has so often happened. Yet more precisely, I want to escape my own shame over it, and the blame I appear to place upon myself for having felt its effects.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
I have a serious suggestion. Your skills might fit lots of jobs available at Microsoft and its spinoffs. My older daughter, who has a PhD in German, has made her mark without ever having to submit to the academic grind. She never even tried to get an academic job, because she saw what was coming.
That is a very good idea. And if it were in a state that paid into Social Security, I could vest. One of the things I fret about is the fact that all I have is my bungalow and 401K which, if I work until I am 82, will support me until I am 92 and that is it. But I only lack 3 or 4 years of work to vest in Social Security and I think it would be smart to do so.
I keep waffling on going into business because I secretly really like my research. BUT.
I hear you about the shame. Such well worn ruts, so easy to slip into their familiar groove.
Yes, although this Native American and “Oriental” blog has other grooves.
One principle I have and recommend is that ambition doesn’t require competitiveness, or envy, or supremacy, or any of the ways of establishing power over others that these last three imply.