I rolled into this town four years ago today.

This is a rather less notable or triumphant anniversary than that of Cory Doctorow’s establishment of Pluralistic, which was four years ago yesterday—but I dare say he too ends up saying to people “you know, the week when the Covid pandemic really became a thing?”, or words to that effect.

I have no wish to open up the debate on when and how pandemics “really” end, but looking back on by time here so far, I increasingly understand those four years as having been overshadowed by Covid in a very particular way. I’m not sure that I would have had a better experience of (or greater longevity in) postdoctoral academia if it weren’t for the pandemic, but I think it reasonable to suggest I would certainly have had a different experience of it.

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But the past is a different country, as the old saying goes—and looking back at last year’s anniversary post, I can see that I was still in the early stages of processing the tacit “no thanks” of the ivory tower.

I remarked to someone only yesterday that I’m trying very hard not to become a stereotypical Ex Academic, and I think mostly succeeding? (It probably helps that almost every academic I speak to below the level of tenure or equivalent asks me furtively for tips on surviving the leap from the tilting deck.) But it would be dishonest to pretend I wasn’t still disappointed on some levels. With the exception of writing—which is the fundamental skill/talent that always underwrote any potential I had as an academic—I have never before tried so damn hard to make something work, to carve myself a place. To take a decade-long run at a thing, and then have to admit to yourself that you didn’t make the grade… that hurts.

Here I’m tempted to insert some cliche about pain as a prerequisite for personal growth, but I think I’ll skip it—not because I don’t believe something somewhat to that effect, but because I don’t want to fall into the trap of writing things which make me eye-roll when others write them. This is not a self-help blog, not even for myself.

(Well, ok, it is a self-help blog for myself in some regards, but that’s a side-effect rather than the intention. Er, I think.)

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So it’s very definitely not in the spirit of (self-)help that I note the tendency of many people, myself included, to look back on anniversaries, and to observe that it’s not a bad thing, but that it might well be balanced by a good bit of looking forward.

Indeed, I’m reminded of one of Paul Saffo’s principles of foresight, which is that one should look back (at least) twice as far as one wishes to look ahead. While the anniversary to which this post is oriented is four years past, the retrospective horizon to which the post itself has been drawn is around a decade; per Saffo, then, this vantage should inform my thinking aimed five years forward.

Where might I be, what might I be doing, how might I be working, five years from now? I have my own firm, I have clients, I have work on the books out to the start of summer—it’s a decent start in a dire economic context.

(And I would of course be remiss in my role as a small business owner if I did not note that Magrathea Futures AB still has capacity currently available from late April onwards, for all your critical foresight and narrative prototyping needs. We can imagine it for you wholesale! Our operators are waiting for your call, &c &c.)

But perhaps it’s time to practice what I preach? Perhaps it’s time to perform a very personal critical utopianism. I am always telling people it’s easier—or at least more viable—to enact a desired future once you’ve really worked out what it is you want. Perhaps it’s time to dream for dreaming’s sake—particularly now, and particularly in the face of *waves hand* all this.

Hope is far from sufficient, but it is nonetheless necessary.