The Office Move

One reason I haven't been blogging much this week is that my office is about to move. Just a block, so my routine won't change, but it has meant a major disruption to my work life. My personal pain is that I am moving to a much smaller space. I never really needed (or rated) all the space I have had, and really this has only tempted me to hold onto all sorts of stuff that I did not need to keep. To slim down for my new quarters I have been on a recycling binge, filling several boxes with discarded paper: draft reports that have gone final, reports from projects I hope never to think of again, obsolete regulations, and so on. That part has felt good.

There is one part, though, that is sad. Among the vast pile of paper I accumulated were many pieces of research that I saved in that hope that I would one day follow up on them. Those that have lain untouched for more than a couple of years I am throwing away. I will never write the articles I briefly imagined when I first stumbled across them. Some no longer seem intriguing to me; some still do, but my main interests have moved elsewhere.

As life moves on, possibilities drop away, and paths not taken vanish in the woods behind us. I suppose the only cure is to keep discovering new possibilities ahead.