Going full circle

I spent extended time at a university town yesterday — and not the first time I'd been to this particular place.

It's about 30-40 miles from where I lived 20 or more years ago, when I first moved to this part of the world, then started my first job in the newspaper business after moving in with my dad.

I'd been here before, when I'd lived up there.

I actually halfway remembered where the town square was. I'd gotten a university library card, while thinking the unversity library looked far different than it did decades ago.

Then, just off the square a block, I saw the city library.

And, THAT was it. Closed by this time on Saturday — a change from decades ago. But, otherwise unchanged, from what I could tell looking through the front door glass.

I still remember how interesting I found it back then that a small town in Texas, in its public library, had a copy of "The Humanist." Yes, being a university town helped, but still. (Since then, I've been in a university town where the town was still a town, not a city, but four times bigger, and the university 20 percent bigger, and the city library didn't have "The Humanist." That said, library funding cutbacks may be an issue in the Internet era.)

A bit of poignancy was in the air. Walking around the university grounds before that probably added to that. At the same time, the present day had me thinking beyond poignancy and deja vu. Something I looked up about my newly-current employer when I got home has me thinking more and more that my current position isn't the right one. One of those intuitive feelings. The question, of course, is how do I change that.

I actually got to thinking that, because there's not "that much" to the university town without the university, it wouldn't be a bad place to retire. Or, get a university PR job before that.

Stay tuned.

The emotions are enough that I think they contributed to a dream during my Sunday afternoon nap.

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I may be checking in here more in weeks ahead. The stresses of moving, a new job, declining to move a second time to a second new job, while seeing this new job acquired (I think for the good, that's why I stayed) by another company is a fricking boatload of stress. And I face it in a small Religious Right-driven Texas Town.