I used to think I would never "retire". And yet tomorrow I am doing something that sounds very much like "retiring".

(The inverted commas are there because I might, after a while, return to some form of employment, and because I will be voluntarily carrying on with some areas of my work, and because "retirement" doesn't really describe what I see myself doing in the future. In what follows, take all the tiny "elevens" as read.)

I never contemplated retiring because the things I have done as jobs -- an evolving mixture, over the years, of teaching, researching, editing, writing, translating, and producing -- are things I inherently enjoy. Why would I want to stop doing them?

And yet I am taking a break.

And the area I am taking a break from is academia. Which I used to think was the dream work environment -- and which still is in many ways.

Within its structures, I have had the privilege of exploring ideas, and writing about them, and passing on knowledge.

And I've been extraordinarily lucky. My students and my immediate colleagues have enriched my life in innumerable ways. I have had a reasonable degree of flexibility in the organization of my work. I have been given a lot of opportunities.

All good, right?

Yet I'm leaving.

Partly it's the "pull" factors. The pull of a big, big world that cries out to be explored, and the pull of a host of activities, individually modest but cumulatively irresistible, that work just doesn't leave enough time for: languages to learn, paths to pace, books to read, health and strength to regain, people to meet, creative and spiritual impulses to work through.

All the cliches clatter up the stairs of my mind: You're not getting any younger... No-one ever, on her deathbed, wished she'd spent more of her life in the office... Seize the day. Seize the day. Seize the day.



It was definitely not my recent illness that caused my decision to leave (it was made, and communicated to my superiors, well before I was diagnosed). But that illness certainly underlined that I was doing the right thing. We never know how much time is left...

There's also a plain fact to look in the face: I've never mastered work; it has always mastered me.

I have never (and this is 100% my fault) managed to keep work in its place, and ensure that it is just one part of a "sane and balanced life". So the pull of a little freedom, at least for a little while, is very strong.



But the "push" factors are not insignificant either.

Academia has changed, and not necessarily for the better. Autonomy is lessening; interference (in the minutiae of teaching, for example) is growing. Too much pressure to publish can stifle creativity and curiosity. The endless, pointless, decreed-on-high reinvention of everything is unutterably wearisome, as cycle after cycle of the same-stuff-but-in-different-packages churns labour-intensively and energy-drainingly through our over-stretched departments.

And the individual lecturer's admin load grows ever more debilitating. I don't just mean teaching-related admin, which is inevitable, and can even be quite satisfying. I mean the "roles" that academics get allocated: senior tutor, exchange coordinator, that kind of thing.

I've never understood this. You don't need a PhD or a teaching qualification to do most of this stuff. The vast bulk of it could be done just as effectively (and, frankly, much more cheaply) by administrative hires. Yet admin-related activities are a swamp into which my time has vanished on a daily basis.

As Hedley Bull famously said, "Thinking is also research." Yet the academic's time to think -- to ponder, to wonder, to "hatch" things -- is steadily decreasing.

More broadly, too, the contemporary work environment has become tougher (and bear in mind that my entire working life has been post-Thatcher/Reagan, so there's never exactly been much slack).

In many cases, in a nutshell: "The way we're working isn't working."

Few and painfully far between are the workplaces that genuinely strive to meet employees' needs.

But, you might demur, why should they? Employers aren't charities, after all.

No, they're not. Yet meeting employees' needs is arguably a much more effective path to increased productivity than all those tedious KPIs and KRAs that we've played along with -- so very, very soul-destroyingly and counter-productively -- for all these years.

It's simple. If you want more from your employees, then supply their four key needs: "physical, through opportunities to regularly renew and recharge at work; emotional, by feeling valued and appreciated for their contributions; mental, when they have the opportunity to focus in an absorbed way on their most important tasks and define when and where they get their work done; and spiritual, by doing more of what they do best and enjoy most, and by feeling connected to a higher purpose at work."

This is hardly mind-bending stuff. And it doesn't even need to cost much. It just needs a little care and creativity.

Instead, many of our workplaces are toxic, feeding the insidious "impostor phenomenon" (because they foster a sense of inadequacy even in individuals who have a track record of achievement and success).

Such environments contribute ineluctably to burnout.



I'm saying all this quite dispassionately. I'm not at all feeling sorry for myself. I'm not regretting anything. I'm not blaming anyone (except myself, a little bit).

But for the clump of reasons I've tried to tease apart above, and despite my guilt feelings (I'm still fit to work, after all, and still have something to contribute), I'm leaving.

For the time being.

I'm so very, very grateful for the good parts. I've said it already, but it needs reiterating: I'll always be in debt to my awesome students and my departmental colleagues.

And I may well be back for more, somewhere else, somewhat further down the track.

But for the moment -- in the immortal words of an intern I once asked to help with a mundane task -- "no, thank you, I've had that experience".