The PhD is not far from your capability. Quite the opposite as you have and are showing. The effect if the last chapter is quite normal as you have lived and breathed it for the last few years. It is for you, ordinary. However, to others it is a new perspective and revelation on the subject. It is new knowledge therefore of value and insight to those who choose to read it.

As for teaching yes I agree it is a job of equals. Both the ‘teacher’ and learner should be learning in the journey and that applies consistently. Hence the equality. If the teacher doesn’t learn then you can sit the student in front of a TV or video or give them loads of books to read …. assuming they have been taught to read … but the experience will be the poorer and of little benefit to society and the individual in the long run.

I also suspect that you are lacking in a self generated ambition. You think you have it for an academic career but I feel that your fallback position goes back to the familiarity of your younger years and you don’t have a benchmark by which to measure your success. You have changed and you hanker after the comfortability of the childhood familiar. Mmm to heavy and inappropriate for a blog. We should do beer.
C’mon Dr McDonald call me

It is possible for someone in your position to say, “While I wait, my (varied) friends are enough; my (multigenerational) family is enough; masturbation is enough” – and for it not to be a lie. It can be a truth that trickles not out your eyes but into your bones, filling you up ever so gradually until you realise that in spite of the absence of moving, you are standing; and that, after so much rotten pain, standing is more than sufficient.

Weddings are no mild endeavour for the lone traveller. When a friend begins a relationship, we are expected to be happy for him or her; when a friend begins a marriage, we are invited to be happy for him or her. The latter is easier and harder at the same time. And if a best friend’s wedding does compel a farewell, then it is also an opportunity for more.

I remember the first time I heard the word usher. It was in an episode of Birds of a Feather. “What did ‘e say?” asked Tracey, referring to the just-mentioned usher. “‘Ush!” Sharon replied. If you are able to attend the wedding, you might discover that your active presence as another’s romantic situation reaches its legally binding zenith enables you to make peace with your own: to command those inner howls of longing and injustice to hush.

You do not have to define yourself negatively by being single. You do not have to define yourself by it at all. Instead, you can trust others’ definition of you – as being singular.

Best wishes for your convalescence.