Is it bad for your career to be an essential part of your identity?

What do I do if taking a promotion may cost me some things that are really important to me?

I don't need the money (not because I'm rich but because it wouldn't really be that much money).

I would be doing it for control...
...control of something that I believe in deeply.

I would be doing it to keep my lifestyle...
...a lifestyle that I am totally addicted to now; I haven't figured out what I will do when this contract is over.

I would be doing it because it is who I am...
...and what I have been striving for; it's the whole point of getting involved in higher education as a field.

But I would have to move to Sarajevo. That is not the hardship for me. I already have an apartment and friends (and obviously a job).

The hardship is moving away from my family and the life I already have.

...but it's just for a year.

And I have to do this. If after everything, I get the ball, I cannot just hand it back. I mean *I* cannot do it, because for me, what I do as a job, the activity that I chose to be the product of my life's energy, is part of what I am.

But I realize that over time, Delaware will forget me. Delaware will move on.

But it's just a year...can things hold together for a year?

Maybe I won't be coming home in a year and a year will become 2, then 5, then 20...but I can make those decisions separately...for right now it's a year.

But I see the road that I am on and it's not leading me home...

For 12 years, the love of my life has been saying that he knows that one day I will pack up and leave all promises and smiles, never to return to him; he is just waiting to find out when.

When I called him excited with the news, there was silence... and then he said:

"Well, here it is. This is it."

And there has been a lump in my throat that I cannot swallow ever since.

Because he is right.