Shannon and I snuck up to Boston last night, a planned-at-the-last-minute trip to scout out the lay of the land for my eventual move this summer. It’s too early to start looking at actual apartments, so we spent today just driving and walking around neighborhoods — Brookline Village, Coolidge Corner, Jamaica Plain, Longwood — trying to feel whether or not I could call any of them home. A lot of the dread that I’ve been feeling over the past few months about the move is rooted in the fact that I’ve built up a lot of comfortable stasis in New York; to wit, I’ve spent college, medical school, and now residency at the same institution, I’ve lived in the same amazing apartment for nearly eight years, and my entire family is arranged neatly around me on the island of Manhattan. Moving away from all that isn’t easy, so the goal of this weekend was simply to begin getting a feel for the new life I’ll be starting in July, and maybe to see that there are places here to plant a new root or two. A vibrant neighborhood, a few beautiful apartment buildings, a ride past my new hospital on the T, a great dinner with friends — today, all of these things helped me take a few steps towards being ready to get on with things. None of it makes it any easier to leave New York, but all of it makes it easier to come to Boston, and there’s nothing but good in that.