In the beginning

I am an academic who no longer qualifies as early career but isn't yet willing to embrace the mantle of middle career (or anything else with the word middle in it for that matter). The funding programmes and initiatives for early career have either passed me by or I was part of the last cohorts that didn't get. Perhaps that additional postdoc would have been a better idea than what I did pick. The postdoc probably distinguishes my field somewhat so let's just assume I'm a non-traditional scientist.  At times I feel weighted down with 'what-ifs' and other abject acts of career orientated self-pity. At other times I think my job is the best thing and I love it. Well, 80% of it anyway.
At the moment, standing at base camp of another academic year, I'm simultaneously looking forward to the return of the restriction of timetables and the semester, and dreading it. I feel I put too many things on hold for semester time, too many important things. But then I proved this summer that I don't do a lot of them even when I have the time.
So why blogging?
Well, my best thing job is quite isolated. I mentioned 'non-traditional' scientist didn't I? I have a general sense of never having fitted in properly anywhere and while I can accept that I generally occupy different space to colleagues, I've never quite come to terms with the feeling of exclusion that comes from that. I also need to get back into the habit of writing more regularly about anything. I follow and read a number of academic blogs and identify with many of the situations outlined in many. I'm less good at commenting because other than saying 'me too', it's not clear what to add.
Why a public blog and why not a private journal? Because reading other blogs show me that it might not just be me and so I share in the hope that someone else might see something and think it isn't just them.