baby goes to grad school

...baby got into grad school.

Actually, baby got into grad school a month ago. I have been Thinking About Things for several weeks - whether I can justify this in terms of my mental, physical and economic health, whether I want this, what this will do for me, how I will manage being thousands of miles from my family, friends and partner, all the rest of it - but I've finished thinking. I'm doing this.

So, this August I will fly to New York City. I'll be spending a year attending Cornell, which is in Ithaca, NY, a city smaller than the village I grew up in, finishing off my legal education. I am looking forward to it, so much, to the experience, to meeting the tonnes of my flist on the east coast, to maybe not feeling a fraud as a lawyer any more.

Yes. That's it. I am all aflail, of course, about the prospect of packing up my whole life and moving continents for a year, but at the same time - I have a good, deep, within-my-bones feeling that this is the right thing at the right time, that this will be scary but good.

(This afternoon I have slow-roasted tomatoes and watched cherry blossom drift past the window while shimgray rediscovers The Kinks. Things, they could be so much worse.)