I'mI haven't posted anything in a while. In August and September, I was immersed in preparing my talk for FlutterCon USA 2024. After the conference, I fell into a bit of a funk, from the cumulative effects of multiple illnesses, the devastation of Helene on the southern Appalachians, and the anxiety and depression leading up to and following the election in November.
Unfortunately, we’re still dealing with that last one, and will probably be for the foreseeable future. But I did want to share a big life change: my family and I are moving to Charlottesville, Virginia!
My wife has accepted a job offer to be assistant director of communications for the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia. It's a great opportunity for her to grow in a way that she really can't do at the University of Tennessee. The offer, combined with the facts that Charlottesville is significantly closer to my family and has better options for when Ian starts grade school, has led us to decide to break out of our comfort zones and try something new.
This move is one of the biggest moves I've ever made. I moved to Knoxville in 2009 to start grad school, and aside from my nine months at Penn State in 2010-2011, I've been there ever since. I have spent the majority of my adult life here, and more of my life here than anywhere except my childhood home in Colorado. I met my wife, earned my Ph.D., fell in love with cycling, left academia, rebuilt my career, weathered the pandemic, had a child, and bought a house, all in Knoxville. I am excited for what Charlottesville has to offer, but I also have countless fond memories of people and places in east Tennessee. I have always thought that it would be nice to move closer to family, but I also knew that leaving somewhere I have called home for so long would end up being bittersweet.
At this point in time, I still haven't entirely processed the fact that we're moving. I keep switching from excited about the new change, to terrified that things won't work, to overwhelmed at everything we need to do, to heartbroken that I'm leaving friends and taking Ian away from his friends, to hopeful about living in a more progressive county. A few times I've thought about how much more simple the next few months would be if we weren't moving, but I also know in my heart that if we didn't take this chance, I'd be wondering “what if” six months from now.
I keep reminding myself that we never intended to stay in Knoxville this long. When my wife and I finished our degrees, we always expected that we'd move, either to wherever one of us got a job, or back west to be closer to our families. Then neither of us landed an academic job, and we didn't have the resources or job network to jumpstart post-academic careers out west, so we stayed in Knoxville. In 2021, when we bought a house and had a kid here, we knew we were committing to Knoxville for the foreseeable future, but we still weren't sure that it was where we wanted to be forever. When my parents moved to DC to be closer to my brother and his family, I always thought that I would be open to moving somewhere closer, given the right opportunity.
Now the right opportunity seems to have come, yet I still can't help but feel lots of conflicted feelings about this move. I’m finding affinity with Bilbo Baggins, alternating between yearning for adventure and longing for comfort in my cozy hobbit hole. I suppose I must have some Took ancestry too, since as much as I want to stay huddled in my home and comfortable in my roots, I'm willing and eager for this new adventure. Let's just hope I don't end up getting eaten by a dragon.