I once had a dream of being an academic, because my perception was that you got to teach people, think smart thoughts, and get paid for it. My idealism got burned very badly after working on research with my profs, thankfully prior to getting too invested in advanced degrees.

It turns out that there are a lot of careers where you get paid to think smart thoughts. Running a small business is one of them. You can still teach, lecture, and even publish in academic journals. (I'm inflicting a paper on the unsuspecting readers of one fairly soon, at the urging of the editors. The institutional affiliation section promises to be a barrel of laughs.)