Finally comfortable here. Time to leave.

Ironic that as soon as I make friends and start a relationship and become productive in my postdoc (finished 2 paper drafts in the past month!), I'm going on job interviews, none of which are in my current city. Which is a terrible city, but it's become awfully comfortable. The closest job is about an hour's drive away, which is pretty far. And I'm trying to think of ways that I could stay here, perhaps just another year. This relationship is going so well that I don't want to put the stress of either geographical separation or a difficult decision on this relationship.

Too early to worry about that, though! This stage of the job market is for getting offers. Once I have offers, I can think about how to make reality work. The hard part about getting offers is seeming so enthusiastic about a place where you don't feel so happy about. My current job, they never asked me what I thought of this city, and it's a temporary postdoc, so they weren't so concerned about that anyhow.

But, really, after putting out all those applications, what I want most of all is just to stay here, doing exactly the same thing as I've done the past 1.5 years, only this time I'll be happy and productive. Perhaps the two grants that I applied for will come through in time to be able to continue here. Maybe I can find more grants. Maybe I will get an offer that will let me defer.

If I stay with Jon and stayed here another year, I think at that point, he could reasonably consider moving with me without feeling like he was premature in his decision, or like it would be too disruptive.