I resonate with this. I'm not 100% FI, can't simply coast from here.. but I could make it work with almost any salary given my savings and lifestyle. Yet I still interview for better paying gigs, and generally turn up the heat on a career I don't love. My answer to "why do I do that" is difficult to give..

It is difficult to answer to that question, and I do not know your specific case, your psychological make-up, your memories, your history and the way you see yourself. However, although I do not know you, I have already listed some possible, if not likely, explanations.

Giving up something at which one is obviously good, for which one is recognized, and which could be the core, or if not the core, a substantial part of one's identity, is challenging. One would have to create another identity, be comfortable saying "I'm not working" when others might think there is something fishy going on, whispering to each other "I don't know what's the matter with her, she doesn't seem to work."

Not getting money when there is money to be had is seen as a serious sin in certain societies in which sweat, pain, and labor are seen as virtuous and relaxing, and doing something for the sake of doing it is the occupation of the lazy and of those with noble origins.

My solution has been to have no external identity, in the sense that what I am is what I can do, but not what I do. For some people I am a sportsperson, for others an aspiring writer, for another group a software engineer. To myself, I am just myself.

I think you meant to say you have no "internal identity"?

You have an external identity by virtue of other's witnessing you. They think something, whether or not you choose to recognize it or manage it or 'internalize it'.

And I'm not sure I'd buy that you have no internal identity unless you are completely in the present moment 100% of the time (which is un-human). Perhaps it's that you have a relationship with yourself that is quite settled - you accept all the parts of yourself and are largely unswayed by what other's think. That sounds like a zen place to be, but also unrealistic. I may go through periods where I'm fully myself without influence, but clearly I have a history which has made me.

And it's not all unwise to have an identity which is affected by what others project. Seems important to learn how to be part of a functioning society.

As for me, I wrote elsewhere in this thread about it feeling like a sacrifice I'm making for future me. I don't know that all this hard work and reaching for career heights will matter in the end.. but I'm not more confident in a different strategy (else I would do that). So I justify my immediate misery for a chance to benefit the future.

We can of course pick apart and find fault in the emphasis being on the future, or why I this strategy.. but no path is without faults.

"External identity" was a hasty definition on my part. It means that I do not identify with the way others identify me.

I was a professional sportsman for years, and that was the way many people saw me. When I stopped, I no longer played that sport, without torment or suffering: when I decided to move on, I didn't need others to move with me. If I had to wait for others, I would have had a "crisis of identityt". When I stopped being an academic researcher, I moved on quickly. In a week, I saw myself as a software engineer; if other people with whom I had a personal or professional relationship continued to see me as a scientist (and a "failed" scientist at that point), that didn't affect me.

I don't have a Zen attitude or life. I feel as joyful, angry or bored, depending on my internal state, as anyone else. But I've never, as far as I can remember, had an identity crisis that wouldn't allow me to pursue other paths without being particularly concerned about how others identify me. And I see it is as a strength. I had been concerned with "identity", each move would have been ten times more painful than it was.

It's not that I don't care how others see me -- I dress very fancy for a reason. It's that it is my life.

If you do what do you do because you think that it will be better for you in the end, you don't have identity problems, you followed a rational path.

I agree for me it really is a matter of identity. Unlike you, I struggle with the idea that I might be seen, but more importantly, that I might see myself as a failed academic. But I'm very slowly accepting that I may be happier building different identities, it's just taking time.