Linus to Lucy

It seems like my posting schedule has gotten a bit interrupted, although this is hardly any real surprise. The "Worship the State" holiday has afforded me a few minutes on a gray and misty day to write a bit—and how I've missed it!

Months on from Gram's passing and funeral, I still find myself missing her. I am a sentimental person, and I suspect that this has something to do with it...but it is also interwoven with other events in life that have lifted a few of the remaining moorings that keep me more thoroughly grounded in where and who I am.

Dad has finally really made the plans to finish up his seminary education in the UK: he and Mom will probably move sometime in April to June 2016. Parents—and grandparents, I think—are something of a security blanket that makes the uncertainties of the future feel a little less daunting. Despite having lived on my own in Columbus and Kissimmee, to say nothing of being married in my own home, there is still a bit of a sense that I have never really left Home. Now that a part of Home is moving away, there is a sense of anticipation, and perhaps more maturity and freedom. However much I declare independence, I'm not sure I will ever be wholly emancipated from my parents' haunting, but I think that their moving presages a period of growth: for them and me both.

Status quo changes in other ways: I've recently accepted a position at a different company, bringing a close to over nine years in my current job. I cannot say I am unconflicted: I like where I work. The freedom of the job, the people, my relative importance and competency, and a built-in antipathy to change make for a trepidatious transition. Even so, I am increasingly persuaded that it's a professional necessity. The new position will teach new skills (systems integration and testing, a bit of robotics programming, and hopefully image analysis) for a small bump in pay and slightly longer commute. This has been years in the making for me, ever since D was let go in 2011. The change is likely to challenge my self-confidence in ways that it hasn't been in some time, and I expect a bit of discomfort here.

My dislocation from teaching has also affected my sense of permanence: while I'm still on the hook, as it were, for one day a week, dropping down from two corresponds to an abbreviated sense of community and inclusion. The sense of purpose I had there has also become more fluid. None of this is necessarily bad. My priorities have changed in the past couple of years, and rightly so: being married tends to remake your identity, and we have been fortunate in many ways that the reshaping has been incremental rather than all at once.

There remains nonetheless a sense of indefiniteness to my position and purpose here. While I more or less reject the idea that work should comport with some mystical telic end—it confers dignity and worth, but it isn't necessarily the goal of living—I still find myself casting about for something purposeful in what I do and who I am. This is probably a result of my underdeveloped sense of vocation combined with an unfortunate tendency to expect a bit too much.

In any case, I've overspent my time here: the corn is getting cold, and I'm going to need to move on to doing some other things.