A homecoming (of sorts)

So I'm in Montreal as I write this, here since Saturday late afternoon (after enduring a three-hour delay courtesy of Porter Airlines), and leaving tomorrow evening. I'm attending the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences (still remembered by many as the Learneds) at Concordia, primarily under the guise of some extra-curricular work I do for a humanities-based association (I edit its newsletter, and thus attend both the council meetings and events it sponsors). While I was somewhat looking forward to getting out of town for a few days, not to mention coming to Montreal (the city of my wonderful youth), my heart and mind isn't truly involved here. It's not that I'm having a bad time - a friend of mine delivering a paper is also here, so I've been hanging out with her, and some of the sessions I'm attending look interesting - but I'm not all that keen on venturing too far outside of Concordia's campus (ie., heading out to the east end to hang out along St. Denis, etc.). Which is odd, since I usually tend to take advantage of these increasingly fewer business-related ventures to engage in some fun and frolic activities and to help decompress. I think it's a lingering hangover from the malaise I've been feeling of late, that I'm not much motivated to do anything that gets me out of my comfort zone. I still feel like I'm in minor recovery mode, if that makes any sense.

These conferences, and the council meeting of this humanities association in particular, also tend to be tough for me, largely because they make me feel terribly inadequate. I tend to feel like I'm on such a steep learning curve with my supposed area of expertise, and forever fearful I'm going to be caught out as an intellectual fraud! So I'm always more on edge as I truly feel outside my comfort zone. (That's been the phrase of the week, actually, "comfort zone," beginning with a long conservation this past weekend with the lovely A.) But onward I go. And I have some "real" work to do, so I feel I can justify my non-presence at some of the less-than-interesting sessions scheduled.