The Integrated Life

It's been a heckuva year, and it's hard to believe it's coming to a close. Wasn't it just BB's 2 year old birthday? Golly. As I do that traditional "take stock of the old and contemplate the new" thing, I find myself thinking about a phrase that our good friend M used recently to describe what 2010 should be like for us.

As many of you know, next month we will be moving to subsidized faculty housing on the campus where S works. It's an exciting opportunity. It will have challenges, of course, but on the whole this move should be a very good thing. Aside from the financial bonus, which will be considerable, the change should allow many other benefits. S will be steps from his office. BJ's preschool is less than a block away. The grocery store is right across the street. We'll be within an easy walk from the library, farmer's market, post office, ice cream shoppe, several good restaurants and coffee shoppes, and who knows what other neighborhood treasures. When I told our friend M about this, she said, "That's so great! You'll be living the integrated life."

And that phrase has really stuck with me. M went on to say how she actually grew up during a time that almost everybody lived a life like this. Suburbs, long commutes, residing in one place and working in another and doing your shopping/playing/living in still other distant locations -- in other words, living the way most of us live -- that's a relatively recent phenomenon for people, really. I'm not going to make official resolutions for 2010, but as I look forward to the New Year, I look forward to living The Integrated Life. I think it will be a very good thing for me and a very good thing for our family.