Part of the reason this is no fun is that I'm choosing NOT to do something

"I'm not going to finish my PhD" doesn't have the same exciting quotient as "I'm going to graduate school in Wyoming." Choosing a negative, thats definitely part of the problem here. I've been lucky enough in life to spend most of my time agonizing over positive choices : who what where when why : to study, to live, to read, to be with.

In all of these choices there has been the implied negative choice: by coming to Wyoming I did not go to Arizona. The negative was in the background. Here: I'm not going to finish my PhD, the negative is in the foreground and the positive has yet to be determined. Some small part of me finds that exciting: maybe something truly unexpected will happen (a movie script, a career switch, the unknown unknowns). But most of me is consumed by looking for the positive. Because when I find it, I won't feel so uncertain.