Previously, I've written under the nom de plume of Test Tube Phoenix. The scientist reinventing himself for a recession economy which had very little room (or jobs) for scientists. In way, this is a repeat of my older introductory diary...but far less hopeful this time out. The flame seems to have been quenched by Hurricane Sequester, which is already dropping the bottom out of an already bleak scientific job market.
So my question is...where on Earth do I go from here? How do I maintain a living, the health care I need to survive? My situation is hardly unique. I'm just one man, running out of time.
My (abridged) background, below, what I can't do, and the rest of the sad story.
I'm an Asperger's sufferer, and I've had to deal with a number of physical illnesses as well (ulcerative colitis being tops, before my corrective surgeries in 2008-2009). So my quest to get a Ph.D. and become a scientist took much longer then many - I failed my candidacy exam and left one graduate school, spent a few years working as a temp in industry, returned to graduate school in 1999, and spent about 9 years there getting a molecular virology Ph.D. I did a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health, before the looming budget cuts of 2011 forced it to terminate early.
I'm currently working as a low-level temp technician at the University of Michigan, and my position will end in September at the latest - possibly much earlier, thanks to the damnable sequester.
Being an Aspie, I have a great deal of difficulty maintaining a professional network. I've had decades of therapy, so face to face I do a pretty good job - I got this job, after all, and probably beat out hundreds of other candidates to get it. But trying to grow and maintain the network is a real issue going forward. (It doesn't help that I've worked for very few Primary Investigators that could afford to send me to meetings...I've been to one non-local meeting in my entire career). This is a large part, I think of why my job situation has been so miserable and unstable.
I've considered a number of other alternative careers:
1) Teaching. Because of my disabilities, maintaining a classroom full of kids, and the rigid schedules of a teacher, are just not practical. Not to mention all you hear about these days are teacher layoffs, never teachers actually getting hired.
2) Museum work. I actually did a stint as a museum volunteer, and made a hard play to getting an Exhibit Developer position - used to be, a Ph.D. could slot into one with no previous experience. However, the crash of 2008 put ALOT of experienced exhibit developers out of work, and more and more of the work is outsourced to contractors. It seems a dead end.
3) Technology Transfer. I looked into that, but it requires far more salesmanship and diplomatic skills then I think I ever will be capable of.
4) Similarly with going into sales or tech support for a supply company like Bio-Rad.
5) Running a "core" (support) lab, instead of doing research. I'm still looking into this, but it's very difficult to get anyone to hire you as a administrator, unless you have previous core lab experience, and a customer base ready-made. Catch-22.
6) Going into business for myself. I have a published game, Dr Arch's Mutations, which I worked on for a year and a half (and actually have sold to one of my fellow Kossacks!). But marketing it continues to be a challenge, because I'm basically broke, and don't have a nice ready-made fan base for something like Kickstarter. Getting more advice on this is the subject of a separate diary that I've got stashed in the hopper.
I could rant endlessly about spending my life following the advice of my mother, my teachers, mentors, etc...following the system, getting the education I needed, and getting screwed anyway. But none of them had crystal balls, none of them realized just how bad it would get...and now I am high and dry.
Where do I go from here? What do I do? At this point, fellow Kossacks, you are the best resource that I have.