My life is feeling pretty up in the air lately, in a way that is not entirely comforting. The new job started last week. And while there is nothing about the new team and assignments that I can complain about, it is still a very strange feeling, being on campus again, sliding back into a role that is oddly familiar at the same time it is completely and totally new. It almost feels like I am trying to adjust to a new flavor of reality, that exists in parallel with my previous life, but it completely unlike it. I feel like Little Nemo in Slumberland. Okay, no one knows who that is. Let’s say I feel like that little kid in The Sixth Sense. “I see dead people.” It does feel rather like there are a lot of ghosts wandering the hallways.
On the home front, there is a new home, a new city and an hour-long commute to get used to. The loft is lovely and swank, but the space is more crowded than I am used to (even if it is spacious by the standards of The City), the cats are spooked by it all, things are never where I think to look for them and there is a lot of “settling” that will need to be done before this space feels “right”.
I am a guy who is used to knowing what he is doing, and how to best do it. And I don’t feel like I have any of those assurances at the moment. I just don’t have my feet under me.
Maybe I’ll love this job and do another ten years, maybe I’ll decide it was a horrible mistake and quit next month. Maybe I’ll love living in the city, maybe I’ll decide the city is fine but this place won’t work, maybe I’ll flee back to the suburbs. I am trying not to over-react to any of this. I have a ton of change all happening at once, and it’s not surprising that I am feeling out of sorts. I am reminding myself to live in the minute, experience it for what it is, good, bad, chaos and learning all at once. Worst case, all of the changes can be undone if necessary.
The only exception is that moving back to the exact place I left is almost certainly not going to be an option. I am okay with that. The one decision that I do feel reasonably comfortable about is that it was time (or past time) to leave there. I had built up too much inertia in that space, and it feels good to have shaken that off, even if I am not so sure about how right the subsequent steps were.
Enjoy the moment. Accept it for what it is. Breath deeply and find the growth in the situation.
5 thoughts on “Being settled with being unsettled”