Heading home

It's been a week! We accepted a VERY LOW offer on the house. But we won't go hungry. At least it'll be out of our hair, and we can move on.

My dissertation distillation article will be published.

I'm still floundering a bit, looking for direction, meaning, purpose. But I'm latching on to some ideas. The longer I go without any real movement on the job front, the more I feel I should just go off in my own direction. I find it distasteful to accept advice that pushes me toward appearing like the crowd.

If I were to accept it, it would be in a sense accepting defeat. I recall years ago someone I knew who indicated he would do anything to work in his chosen field. And he described the choices he had made. I'm not willing to do that. That is, I don't desperately need to be a professor. What I want is to be able to pursue my interests, to teach a new generation of thinkers, to inspire people with ideas, to ask interesting questions, and follow the paths that those questions initiate. If I can't do that by being a professor, then I just have to figure out how.

It's important to me to remember the difference between what I need and what I want. The more I can recall what I don't in fact need, the more able I will be to turn down something that is less than what I want. Meantime, I sits and waits.

Heading home soon. It was overall a nice visit with my mom. See you on the other side.