Is anyone else familiar with the situation of having a definite research agenda, being unable to get financial support for even a part of it, and so having to choose to do something irrelevant just to stay alive? That last step seems to be particularly agonizing. It's like having to choose the form of torture to which you will be subjected (with starvation or homelessness being the default if you refuse to choose).

I have no doubt there are people here who have wanted to do research at some time, and either compromised or had to settle for non-research jobs. But I don't often see the experience of being shut out described as a thing of horror, which is more or less how it is for me. I can't tell if this is just a passing stage before one resigns oneself to the new situation, or if the intensity of the awfulness is unusual in my case.