I did my undergrad in a technical subject. I was very interested in cognitive science, I went to grad school to pursue this interest. I did a Msc and PhD which went quite well. My PhD was very productive , and I learned a lot + enjoyed it. Most importantly I found a very specific topic I was passionately interested in and I focused on that, and I wanted to devote my career to research on this subject and decided to do a postdoc. Unfortunately, my postdocs did not go that well, due to a mix reasons. Partly I picked the wrong subjects for me & partly the lab was awful, and the admin load was too high for me. I was increasingly depressed and frustrated, which made it worse, as it affected my performance 2) I found it very challenging to pick up a new topic & methods from my PhD, without a a broader base / discipline of say an under graduate education in the scientific discipline 3) I did not feel motivated when working in an area outside my specific interest area from my phd. I got only 1 first author paper. Whereas I had about 13+ from my PhD. I made a lot of these choices due to family reasons. I would be really grateful if anyone had any advice
PS: I know we are not supposed to use random made up names on this forum but I did not want to use my real name!