I am again feeling the urge to do something. 'Doing something' to me inevitably means moving to some place like Dheisheh, or Sarajevo, and destroying any lingering sense of normalcy or complacency in my life; thrusting all my dust into the wind and trusting in life's subtle pattern for making things alright in the end. Only, making a decision like that now involves bringing Loren along for my adventures and experiments. She tends to need that normalcy more than I, and we have to consider each other's essential characteristics when deciding how to live. Only, can it really be fair to weigh my back-drop whim's against her chance at having the story book life she has always wanted - and that we have just barely begun to build? Should I feel guilty for desperately wanting to be on the go?

She tells me she will go anywhere with me. Of course she would say that. She loves me. But does that really give me license to jet set? I love her too, and want to give her that story book life. God knows we are indelible soul mates, but in so many ways we seem incompatible, and the trend toward stability is just one of those ways. When she needs structure, I need adventure. When I need variety, she needs routine.

Before we married I promised her every bit of my life, and she knew that meant settling down would be a long way off. But likewise, I knew that settling down would have to happen someday. So the question is where are we now.

We moved to Boone so that I could start graduate school, and we have been here for three months now. I feel more than anything I need to be on a train crossing the Indian steppes, or working in an AIDS clinic in a village in Lesotho. Yet I know she is still struggling to feel like she has a routine here in Boone. And I am struggling not to. I get so bored with business as usual and begin to feel like my life doesn't amount to much. And I never want to feel that way. Yet can I justify uprooting everything again?

Yes. But not now. Moving Loren to Boone may have constituted a commitment to that Master's degree. If I am going to put her through resettlement, she has to know it is worth it. And moving here just to decide where to move to next is simply not worth it. We are here and that degree is valuable for a plethora of reasons. So I will get it. Period.

But the taunting question lingers: Where to next?