Advice on post-doc when unable to move insitutions
I’m about 10 months into a postdoc in Canada with my PhD supervisor. I know - same supervisor is not great but I had a child shortly after my PhD, so it was necessary for financial and logistical reasons. Though it’s not great, the lab is very productive and I have a good publication record with many first/second author papers in good journals. Problem is, I have zero grant funding and no grant or fellowship applications in the works so I’ve failed to distinguish myself from my PhD supervisor. I just never had the bandwidth to think about any of it until now while balancing parenting duties over the past year.
Things are starting to normalize a bit on the parenting front and I am trying to plan next steps - but I am not willing to move locations. I have thought about switching supervisors at my current university but, to be honest, my current supervisor is well-known and the best at my institution for the research I want to do so I think switching for the sake of it may not be the best idea, but I am also trying to address the negative perceptions around sticking with the same supervisor.
I’m also thinking about a remote post doc, and two profs at different institutions (one within Canada and one outside Canada) have agreed to help with my fellowship applications as supervisors but where I am not able to move there is some uncertainty over whether this is possible (eg. if the other Canadian institution can host fellowship funding, should I be successful, if I am based in a different province).
As part of my post-doc contract my current supervisor and I negotiated 4 weeks of professional development time, but where I am constrained on moving institutions I don’t know if it is worth using this time to write fellowship applications. Current supervisor has also given me the option to lead the writing and submission of a grant they have in mind during this time instead. But again, if I choose to do this I once again fail to distinguish myself from my current PhD supervisor who would be PI on this grant.
In general, what would you aim for if you wanted to continue in academia but couldn’t move to a different institution for additional experiences? What would you do in my position? What would you use the 4 weeks PD time for? Any advice is appreciated