When you optimize your talents very well, you can pick money from people's pockets and nobody will ever get the guts to call you a thief.
Anger's like a battery that leaks acid right out of me And it starts from the heart 'til it reaches my outer me
I like living in my head because in there, everyone is kind and innocent. Once you start integrating yourself into the world, you realize that people are nasty, mean creatures. They're worse than zombies. People try to crush your soul and destroy your happiness, but zombies just want to have a little nibble of your brain.
After you hear and listen. First must come desire. Second must come willingness. Third should come understanding. Fourth should come progression and with progression will come more understanding.
A wonderful area for speculative academic work is the unknowable. These days religious subjects are in disfavor, but there are still plenty of good topics. The nature of consciousness, the workings of the brain, the origin of aggression, the origin of language, the origin of life on earth, SETI and life on other worlds...this is all great stuff. Wonderful stuff. You can argue it interminably. But it can't be contradicted, because nobody knows the answer to any of these topics.