Whoo boy

It has been a crazy few weeks. I can hardly believe I left Walla Walla only two weeks ago. I wanted to send updates sooner but I’ve been running on some type of auto-pilot and most of my normal life tasks and functions seem to have been suspended. I’m still trying to catch up on all the things that happened on the internet, and I should probably send some emails to some people so they know I’m still alive.

I started my new job on Monday, and four days in I’m starting to settle into something of a routine. I’m excited about the work, despite the fact that it’s not entirely what I expected. I’m definitely going through some amount of culture shock: I was working at a small liberal arts college, in a library with only seven librarians, and now I’m in a large office building in downtown Oakland, working in a small cubicle and surrounded on all sides by librarians and programmers and project managers and UX designers and who knows what all else. I was working in what was essentially a department of one; my projects were managed by me with occasional check-ins with the Director and perhaps one or two other folks. Now I’m part of a much larger team, and we have people whose sole role is to manage projects. It’s very, very different.

Not to mention that we haven’t moved into our apartment yet, my partner is still on the other side of the country wrapping up his stuff and getting ready to move, and I’m kind of in personal life limbo. I’m doing everything I can to manage the completely predictable stress I’m feeling (because when I’m stressed I get grouchy and no one wants to be grouchy in their first days on a new job). I’m trying to keep reminding myself that I’ll adapt to the differences, that we’ll be settled in soon, that I’m just not good with change.

It helps whenever I look around me and remember that I’m in California, I’m in the Bay Area, I’m in my favorite place ever. I instantly relax a little bit, and smile, and think, “Yes, I made the right choice.”