Good bye

I started this blog in my own words "to blog primarily about thoughts about my work and life out here". Well, both work and here are changing. Today is my last day at my small northeast ohio medical school, and my last day as a trainee. As of next week I will be fully fledged tenure track junior faculty, and back on the east coast. And so I feel this is a good time to end this blog.
I have enjoyed writing it immensely. It has helped me think my way through the past five and a half years. But it was written for a time, a place, and a version of me. And all those things have changed.
I do not use the internet as I once did as a trainee scientist, as a place to learn more about my chosen field and my career path through it. And indeed, the world has changed, especially online, since the heady days when I joined twitter and later started blogging. As the great unpleasantness of 2016 wore on, I began to become exhausted by the endless hot takes and rapid fire opinions of the internet. And so I began to question my own role in it. Is what I have to write so essential?
When I retreated from the internet, a friend of mine commented that that was loss of a young queer academic voice on the internet. Perhaps. But quitting the internet meant recommitting to where I was physically. To become a young queer academic voice in rural northeast ohio. Which is no less valuable.
The tension here is one I have always felt. I call it the Bolkonsky Bezhoukov dichotomy, after two of the main characters from Tolstoi's war and peace. Prince Bolkonsky, a sceptical materialist, gives up the opportnity to be a camp aid, convinced that he can do more good, indeed only do good, as a sergeant to his unit. Peter Bezhoukov in contrast, believes in the paths of providence, the possibility of great change, and moves from secret society to secret society to be part of that great change. These days, I am a Bolkonsky, but unlike Tolstoi, I think a Bolkonsky can indeed do thing.
So I am ending this blog. Thank you for reading. And watch where else I will speak, in new ways, about new challenges.
Good luck to you all.
Paleogould