Hang in there, and try to write something everyday...

That's my takeaway quote from one of the the many readings I've been assigned since starting back to school in September.  Here's the rest of the quote from an article by John W. O'Malley,

"The moral of the story: hang in there, and try to write something every day no matter how banal or stupid you think it is going to sound.  When you come back the next day, you might be able to salvage a paragraph or two, and thus, agonizing paragraph by agonizing paragraph the book gets written." (O'Malley, The Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 93, No. 3 (Jul. 2007), p. 586.)

Some days it feels like I've jumped into the deep end of the pool and I forgot my bathing suit.  It's terrifyingly vulnerable as a first year PhD student.  Other days it feels like I've stumbled through an open door into a Narnia like world, with endless possibilities that await in my tiny, grey, library cubical.

Aside from school, we're saying goodbye to our Hanover house next week.  It's bittersweet since our whole family loved that house: so many beautiful moments.  But its time to set it free to become a memory box for a new family with young children.  Besides, a new world with rich memories awaits us in the town of the Blue Mountains.  For example, today, a new friend from the Blue Mountain church and his friend helped load and move my tractor to our new community.  Unfortunately, we couldn't predict the weather so it happened in a downpour.  I'm grateful to be warm and dry now.  I'm also thankful for a couple of new friends willing to get wet with me to relocate a tractor.