Song of the future

Sitting in front of the screen open to the Blogger posting page, I wiggle my thick, oafish fingers and search for the right things to say, two weeks after my last post. O Muse of Six-Year Graduate Students, help me to sing the song of my last days here in Ann Arbor!

The paperwork for the PhD now firmly behind me, I've been preoccupied with thoughts of the future. Where should I go? What should I do? It's amazing how little some things change in my life between the ages of 18 and 31.

Those who know me know that one of my fondest childhood memories is of my dad taking me to the library on the weekends. I'd peruse books on airplanes and birds, photography and cooking, astronomy, dinosaurs, camping, computers -- in fact, just about everything seemed interesting. If someone had considered a topic interesting enough to write about it, it -- whatever "it" was -- could seem interesting to me as well. I was a bibliophilic empath.

Sometimes I'd feel overwhelmed by the choices at the library. And that's sort of what I'm feeling now. I'm sitting in a room full of gold. As a postdoc I won't live extravagantly, but I'll live well enough by the standards of human history and have the luxury of getting paid for doing something that I like. My basic needs will be met, my physical hardship will be at times of my choosing (say, while exercising), and most of my effort will be devoted to putting ink on paper. In short, the picture seems rosy if I count up from 0 instead of back from 100 and compare myself to paupers, not kings.

I have a leaning on which of the three offers I'll ultimately take. I have until tomorrow to decide. And if it seems like I'm sitting in a room surrounded by gold, where my opportunities are nuggets, then it's also clear I can't stay here. I'm going to have to pick one of the nuggets and go. Stay tuned for Stew's decision.