Hiatus

No, the blog is not going on hiatus. I've had too long of a hiatus from blogging while I was writing my thesis. Instead, this week has felt very much like a hiatus. I managed to find a small, but very nicely located apartment in my future home. (The urge to settle here permanently is already growing within me, though that's not yet practical.) And now I take a walk out of my hotel now and then to get a meal, see a movie, or skim a book in the public library. Hopefully, I'll see friends this evening. It's not really a vacation. Any pretense to this being a business trip vanished this morning. So instead it's a pause. I'll leave early next week. I'll go back home with a renewed vigor, focusing on whatever will make life here smoother and make permanent settlement (here or somewhere else) more probable.

One of the priests at my current parish is a former university chaplain. She said to me recently, "We love having folks from [my institution] here, but then you have to leave in four or five years, just when you're most deeply involved." Yet I felt joyful having five years to spend anywhere, knowing that the next stage of my life involves moving every one or two years in hopes of being able to stay somewhere for a minimum of six. So I really need to enjoy the year or two I get to spend here and restrain my feelings of rootlessness for a while.