The picture above I took while traveling through Germany on January 2nd. 2013 is going to be an exciting year in my journey – personally and academically!

I am sorry I did not continue the blog. Part of it was that pressure to finish that blog about the meeting we had on AGN at Ringberg castle. It was an impressive meeting, I learned a lot and Ringberg is a really beautiful location, especially in the snow. But… I felt lazy blogging about it. I grew scientifically, but I don’t know if that interest people that read my blog. I don’t know much to say beyond what was said on David Rosario’s blog on the meeting here and the live tweeting/discussions that I had with people online during the event.

And that became sort of like the blogging dilemma everybody goes through. My numbers of readers did not overly increase. I kept wondering if reaching out to those that read this blog was important. If me writing about my New Year’s scientific resolutions online would be viewed as conceited. If me addressing some “crisis” (philosophical or practical) in astronomy could be viewed as megalomaniacal. I am a postdoc, enjoying what I do, still mostly an observer and wonderer about the world around me. In the last few weeks I have found myself on opposite sides of the “consensus” opinion around me and I wonder if my voicing it in a blog is not adding fuel to a fire to which everybody is entitled to their own opinion (for example, politics).

Another part was that a lot is happening around my life. Many changes are on the horizon for me, many of which I will address on this blog in due time, too. But some things, like job prospects, really shouldn’t be talked about until everything is sorted out. There are people that thrive on it, that are delighted in discussing the rumors of who’s going where and when and why, but I simply don’t like to talk about it.

Then there are other things keeping me away: proposals, observing, work. It seems like every day is filled with meetings that keep me away from the desk and at the end of the day I sit there wondering where it went – I used to be so much more productive.

I was wrong, though. I missed blogging these last two months – those few hours of introspection. I missed putting my thoughts about the week into words. For example, last week I had a 2-day career workshop. It didn’t do wonders or anything, but it solidified me in many decisions I took 2 years ago – staying in astronomy. I still feel like I need to put down those experiences into written words, but also to share it with anybody that is interested in it (that would mostly be astronomy postdocs).

I am not going to be all draconian about it, though. Maybe I’ll write a week, maybe I won’t. Maybe there’ll be two posts in a week, who knows. On Saturday I will be traveling to the US for three weeks. I am sure lots of thoughts will go through my head, plus travel is always good to write about. So with that, if you still have me in your Readers or RSS feeds – thank you. I hope to continue writing stuff about being a postdoc in observational astronomy. In the end, it’s something I really want to communicate to the world, because I really like what I do!