Hah, I don't really enjoying revisiting my decision making but I'll try to answer. I've been away for just over a year and I miss the people and the freedom but I don't miss the politics and the rat race.
Grad school was successful. However, my postdoc was a different story, I got a relatively prestigious fellowship at a DOE lab but my supervisor quit before I started and I tried to do my own stuff but really didn't get much support and it wasn't much fun or productive. I quit after 2 years, about 1 year ago and joined a small biotech company in the bay area. I'm pretty sure I already have too large a gap in my publications to go back, I thought about going back to academia for a bit but that would have entailed doing a 2nd postdoc but I really wasn't interested in moving some random place for 3+ years, then dealing with the whole faculty application process again and 5+ more years before eventually getting tenure.
If you don't hate writing grants maybe academia can be for you.
Do you have any interest in neuroscience? My lab (malinowlab.com) has two postdoc openings right now at UCSD, and we take smart people from any STEM field.
Grad school was successful. However, my postdoc was a different story, I got a relatively prestigious fellowship at a DOE lab but my supervisor quit before I started and I tried to do my own stuff but really didn't get much support and it wasn't much fun or productive. I quit after 2 years, about 1 year ago and joined a small biotech company in the bay area. I'm pretty sure I already have too large a gap in my publications to go back, I thought about going back to academia for a bit but that would have entailed doing a 2nd postdoc but I really wasn't interested in moving some random place for 3+ years, then dealing with the whole faculty application process again and 5+ more years before eventually getting tenure.
If you don't hate writing grants maybe academia can be for you.
Good luck.