Here’s a map of many of the locations in AMC’s TV series “Mad Men,” which recently concluded its first season.

I totally got into this show. Did any of you watch it? What did you think?

Today was my first day commuting to work from our new apartment. I took the C train from 110th Street to Penn Station, then New Jersey Transit to Newark. I could have left home later, because I had to wait for 10-15 minutes for the train to Newark. On a normal day, I think I’ll be able to make my commute in an hour, compared to my old commute of 45-50 minutes. Not that much longer – it’ll just be more expensive.

And now I get to ride the NYC subway during rush hour like a normal NYC commuter. My previous commute was by PATH train, in the direction opposite rush-hour traffic. Now I get to stand on a crowded subway. Not quite as comfortable – but the NJ Transit train is barely full, so I get to ride the express train to Newark in my own private seat with nobody next to me.

I didn’t sleep well last night. I fell asleep around 12:15, but I woke up around 5:00 and stayed awake for an hour and 15 minutes before falling asleep again. Right now we have a mattress without a bed, and the ambient light from street lamps pours into our bedroom window. We’ll be provided curtains, but as an interim measure last night I taped up a bedsheet against the window. It helped a little bit, but not completely. I’ll probably sleep better tonight — sometimes I just wake up too early in the morning for no reason.

We have a lot of unpacking to do, though I’m still wary of fully settling in, since we’ll have to move again by mid-May.

I was missing our old apartment a little this morning. So I looked at a bunch of photos that Matt took when we first moved into the old place. My eyes actually welled up a little as I looked at them. What a great apartment in a great location. Boy, were we spoiled.

I kinda miss my old home.

There’s a front-page article in the Times today about how gay neighborhoods are disappearing — something beyond the ordinary demographic shift of neighborhoods over time. Some causes: skyrocketing real estate prices, straight people moving in, gay couples moving to the suburbs, a decreasing perceived necessity for gay people to band together, and the Internet.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In the scheme of things, gay neighborhoods are a new idea, only having come into existence around 1969. The ebb and flow of physical cultural communities is natural. The Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Puritans banded together, but their descendants spread out across New England and diluted their identity; the Jews of Brooklyn and Queens moved out to the suburbs of New Jersey and Long Island.

You don’t have to live in a ghetto in order to feel part of a community. We all juggle numerous identities inside ourselves. When I was a kid, I went to a public school five days a week like everyone else, but on Wednesdays after school and on Sunday mornings, I went to Hebrew school at our synagogue. I had Jewish friends and Christian friends, and I felt different kinds of affinities with each group — religious ties, school ties, generational ties.

In high school I was part of the drama crowd but also part of the yearbook crowd. In college I was part of a tight-knit group of friends in my dorm, but I was also part of a tight-knit men’s chorus and a tight-knit a cappella group. In fact, I got a rush out of switching identities depending on whom I was with.

It’s healthy to be part of more than one group, to mingle. The more you get to know other people, the less you will see them as The Other, as one-dimensional foes.

Meanwhile, people of common affinities will always seek each other out. I don’t much go to gay bars anymore, but I have my gay men’s chorus every week. My best friend at work is gay. And of course I’ve got my Gay Boyfriend.

It could be that gay neighborhoods were part of a special cultural moment and that that moment has passed. But nothing lasts forever.