I’ve been travelling now for over a week. Prior to this trip, I went to Texas for 5 days. After this trip, I’m going on a 10 day vacation. I’m tired and I find myself craving routine rather than adventure. I feel like I’m not strong enough yet – I need more time to heal – I want to feel stronger before I really start adventuring.

Part of what I’m feeling is that being away from home is exhausting. Each time, I come home tired, and need time to recover from my trip. I need time to get re-grounded.

This is highlighting to me that I’m not ready to go back to school yet. I have been leaning very strongly towards putting my PhD on hold for another year. That would allow me to get a little further away from the side effects caused by chemotherapy. It would allow me a little more time to get my brain back. Mostly, it would allow me to take a deep breath and not rush back into a crazy busy life. It would give me the time to focus on healing rather than focusing on work. It is something that I didn’t really realized I needed – but I do. I need more time. I need to not feel sick, and not feel tired, and not be struggling to fit exercise into my day.

This afternoon I adventured out a bit around Vancouver. Since I’m staying in a condo near False Creek and Granville Island, I decided to get a AquaBus pass and explore the area. On the final AquaBus ride back across the creek, someone on the boat said they were short a nickel. I had a nickel so I gave it to him. His comment was that it meant good karma points for me. It turns out, it was Kurt Browning. Someone else on the boat recognized him, and he mentioned that he was doing this show tonight – Stars on Ice. It was amusing the people he was talking to didn’t know much about it … anyways, that was my Vancouver star spotting for the afternoon. I’d have asked for a photo but the other folks had him engaged in conversation and I didn’t want to interrupt.  I can now say, I gave Kurt Browning a nickel on the ferry 🙂