Truly Becoming a 'Mad Biologist'...

So I'm sitting on a bus, having temporarily left the Washington, DC area to spend a few days in New York City. In front of me is the book I've been reading on this trip: a collection of Kafka's works called 'The Metamorphosis and Other Stories'. This gets me to thinking: What is the point of reading Kafka (and trust me, some effort is involved in its reading) if I'm not really going to have anyone to talk to about it?

In the past couple of months, I've had multiple people talk to me about my blog, including friends, family, colleagues, acquaintances met at scientific meetings, and even one visiting professor. Who knew that so many people were taking the time to read what I was writing here? Anyways, the majority of them have made comments about how unfortunate it is that I essentially stopped blogging (in fact I'm not sure that anyone's going to be reading this, given that I've been 'off the grid' for so long that I doubt anyone comes here anymore). Truth is, every time someone brings up the blog, it wounds me a little bit; there are lots of memories invested in this small corner of cyberspace, and my decision to cut down on blogging was not made lightly.

The past - what has it been now? - 5 months have been rather tumultuous for me. As always, my work has been taking up the lion's share of my time, and I diverted all of my efforts into working on a side-project with a highly uncertain future. If it comes together perhaps I'll be able to talk about it some day. On a more personal note, I have recently found myself a bachelor after many, many years of having been off of the 'market'. This really isn't necessarily a 'bad' thing, however; a career in the sciences is a harsh mistress and sometimes neither person is willing to sacrifice their goals in order to accommodate a relationship. It's not like I'm worried, many opportunities for such things lie ahead.

Anyways, in the tradition of past blog posts here is a map of my current journey:




I think I want to start blogging regularly again...