I'm about to begin my PhD studies, but I'm not sure if I'm making the right choice.
I want to study something that helps people. But it seems that the motivation of my PhD sponsor organization is to layoff employees and replace them with a computer system. Which, by the way, will never be as good as having humans.
I'm not sure if I want to do a PhD at all anymore. I want to stop being me, and become Cindy (my imaginary friend). I want to travel as far away from all this as possible.
I had almost convinced myself that I was on the wrong career path, and that it was time to move city (or maybe even country), and start searching for a just-enough-income-to-survive job with more human-interaction (perhaps starting out as a McDonald's crew member).
However, my ability to do good for this world depends upon me developing "career capital". Recklessly trashing the current plan without a proper alternative would destroy that career capital.
Furthermore, there is a lesson to be learned from the logs of Ponystasha, who actually tried becoming his imaginary friend (or "tulpa" as he calls it), ending in embarrassment and disillusion. He said that before the change-over "life was actually quite chilled I had very little worries".
Living a fairly "chilled" life is one of the few things I actually like about myself. I'm not interested in marriage, housing, fashion, luxuries, social status, or money. I like starry nights, curling up in front of a laptop, watching movies meant for pre-teen girls, hanging out with my imaginary friends, and eating spaghetti. In short, although I'm in my 20's, at heart I'm still a kid. I'm sure some people might look down on me with concern. But my life is simple, and I like it that way.
So I'm going to invest (or possibly waste) another few years of life studying for a PhD. I want to build and discover cool stuff. I'm going to change this world. One bit (get-it?) at a time.