I hear the mermaids singing

Still feeling an ungodly strong pull back to our little spot on the east coast. I'm not sure what's up. Part of it I'm sure is the shifting complicated landscape in work life. I've just had a jolly year of exciting new experiments, new grants, positive feedback on my book manuscript, but now things are settling. The workload at the university is crushing -- every day sees me fall a bit further behind and in command of experiments that I know could be better if I had a bit more time to think them through. The book is at a delicate stage -- waiting for feedback on a second draft, unclear when we'll publish or what I should be doing during the wait.

Or maybe it's just a mid-February thing.

I keep coming back to this single image of myself, walking along a high bluff by the side of the ocean, watching my feet scuff the dirt, having the kinds of thoughts I never thought possible. I wonder if I'll ever get that again.