I want to say immediately something, anything, about your beautiful post. I'm an academic too and I am undergoing a big change in the way I work too. Not sure if it's the same change. I feel dreaming time is coming to an end and I'm about to do something very concrete, maybe something small (walking, not flying), but definitely mine and very genuine. It feels the right thing to do and it does feel like growing up.

I don't know what else to say: I'm watching myself from outside, hoping that all will go well...

Very beautiful posts. Both of them. I was wondering whether to respond, I want to respond because I like them and want to take part in the discussion, but also simply as a way to acknowledge reading them, witnessing them. On the other hand my response is also a bit of a warning sign, so wasn't sure. As you can guess I decided to respond, mainly due to your title - Growing up.

To continue Epipsychidion metaphor, you know how in many adventure or action movies the heroes arrive to the far away place with their plane crashing and it's not clear how they are going to leave this place. Well, in movies they always manage to find some other fortuitous way of transportation. All I can say is - after landing, after walking, you'll need to lift up again, if you want to do anything serious that is.
Being down in the tranches is all very good, but it's nicer to have Pegasus with you so you can fly away when you need to, or better yet - grow wings of your own.

Sadly, people's idea of growing up, especially in Academia, is to land and start walking, and walk and walk and walk, and walk, and its all good for a while, but then they don't get very far, working on their tiny problems, still in the trenches, where the beautiful image they saw when deciding to land there is lost in the details of what's immediately in front of their eyes.

You mentioned landing a twin-propeller plane, and the image of The little prince immediately comes before me. The kid and the adult. Like the adult - make sure you can fix the plane and will be able to fly again, or better yet, like the kid, fly from planet to planet. Yes, one needs to walk the dangerous desert to learn things,  but then you don't get very far by staying there.

Serious research is constantly both flying and landing, zooming in and out. You need to learn to hover, so you can easily move from flying high to crawling down low. It might sound obvious to you but most people, especially in Academia, simply landed at some point in their small spot, and stay there. They learn every nook and cranny of their millimeter, and very soon simply are too tired to go flying again and continue to defend their tiny spectacle of land as their own.

To use Layla Tov's metaphor, of feeling dreaming time is coming to an end - Life is not simply being awake (whatever adults say). Life is dreaming and waking up, but then going to sleep again, perchance to dream. Just as much research is done while sleeping as while being awake.