Go live in halls of residence with the freshers unlike the first time. I've always had a bit of the peter pan going on attitude wise, but aside from it not really being an option financially I doubt it would work out for me given my age now. which is depressing. I feel old and feel like academics has sucked to much of my youth like a vampire.

So my question, just kicking an intellectual football around here, what next?

You see I'm not even sure why I'm posing this. I just wanted a sounding board I guess.
I'm about to finish the 1st drought of my thesis, nearly a year over due. I'm not happy with it but I doubt I ever would be. the truth is it's been hell. I went into it thinking i'd be so fast and results would come so quickly I'd be writing my thesis up a year early. The truth is in my 1st year my hard drive crashed loosing me 8 months of research and many personal files. My brother got married, divorced, moved in with me and my parents who were offering my free accommodation since I ended up doing a PhD at my home town university. My father had a serious stroke nearly died, recovered, my grandmother who I was very close to died. my mother caught pneumonia and had a heart atack and nearly died. To top it off I've been beset by health issues in the last year.

The true irony, when I started this PhD I felt like a broken man full of grief struggling with personal issues and part of the reason I took the PhD is I was fairly confident I could do it, be in charge of my own time unlike a 9 to 5 job, i got offered a government grant, so i figured I'd use the flexibility and independence the PhD offered me to try to sort my issues out and get back on my feet but if anything I now have more issues.

I really have no passion for my project which is odd because I've worked very hard on it and pushed for new innovative territory. Sill I feel confident when my PhD gets read by some one who knows what they are doing they will either declare it brilliant or trite and meaningless. My best result is a new maths technique for solving a type of equation and I have a horrible feeling some expert might come a long and tell me it's not new or that it only applies to trivial useless cases.

So I'm coming out of a PhD arguably in a worse state mentally than I went in, definitely in a worse state physically, And the principal thing my PhD has taught me about my self is I don't want to be an academic. Oh don't get me wrong I love applied maths and STEM related stuff, I love research really just not academic research. I want to feel empowered over my life for a change and all academia seems to do is work on very narrow topics with questionable originality. Really ground breaking research seems rare at least in my university.

I have no idea what do do next, assuming i graduate which i expect is prity certain even with my miss givings about my best result. It's not like there is a job agency for people like me. Scientist wanted to design giant robot, develop mathematical models of novel fusion generators. Ok you might find those examples flippant but the really big and interesting projects don't seem to recruit even if they'd have me. And even if they would I'm not sure if thats enough ... I don't really like my self right now, who I've become, yet I don't really feel empowered to change that.

Honestly if I thought I could get away with it I'd go and do another degree. Go live in halls