[FreakLegion]

Your odds might not be so bad. It's a tough market for anyone working in traditional (read: overcrowded) areas [1], but there are precious few folks working in the intersections, particularly between the arts and sciences [2]. Of course, you'd have to be willing to live below the poverty line for a while!

I highly recommend working up some paper abstracts and pitching them to conferences to gauge interest. There are plenty of organizers who won't care that you aren't affiliated with a university, and that would be a great chance for you to get in a room and chat with others who share your interest.

1. http://chronicle.com/article/Graduate-School-in-the-Huma/448...

2. Purely anecdotal, but I've taken Ph.D. phil and lit seminars at Berkeley and UO, and never encountered another student who could even code. They must exist, but they're rare.

[davesims]

Ha, yeah it's that poverty line problem (not to mention the geographical volatility) that kept me out of academics and embedded (as it were) in the front lines of software development. Not conducive to the raising of the kids. Maybe someday...