night-before jitters

tomorrow morning, i start my new job. (to recap: it's a five-week, full-time, in-office writing/editing gig for one of my editors.)

and i'm nervous.

it didn't help that i'd originally planned to spend the week before my start date getting all caught up on all my other work and getting my ducks in a tidy row so i could begin the job with a clean, relaxed slate... only to have my mac die and to then spend much of that prep time running around trying to piece together an e-solution. it put me very much behind schedule, and caused a much more frantic pre-work week than i'd intended.

also, it's been ten years since i worked anywhere other than my living room, and i'm anxious about the adjustment. i feel very much like a little girl on the night before the first day at a new school, with a knapsack full of butterflies and questions.

what will it be like?

what should i wear?

where will my desk be?

will they like me?

will anyone eat lunch with me?

there are the professional anxieties, related to my time away from the workplace. publishing -- the production side, certainly -- has changed dramatically since 2001. i haven't had to use any of the necessary software or applications since then (and, even then, my knowledge was cursory), and i know i've got some learnin' to do PDQ. in these respects, i feel sort of like a woman who left the workforce to raise a family and who's now stepping back into the fray... which has moved forward without her.

will i know what i'm doing?

will i get the hang of things quickly and easily?

am i going to blow it?

and, naturally, the big one:

will i fail?

intellectually, i know i'm capable. if i wasn't, i wouldn't have been offered the job in the first place. i know i can do the job, and that i'm smart enough to pick up the skills i don't yet have or polish the ones that have become a tad rusty. i know my muscles may be stiff, but i'm sure they'll limber up quickly.

emotionally, though, my nerves are buzzing. i just keep telling myself to calm down, quit screaming and remember who i am and what i can do.

i gave my 20s to a full-time job, after all, and i was really, really good at. i was a casual workaholic, a master multi-tasker and i was, for the most part, very happy. so, really, why am i at all worried?

just because it's new. it's different. it's change. and, as we all know, change sometimes poses a challenge for me. as much as i want to be a roll-with-the-punches, go-with-the-flow gal, i tend to get rigid and tense when venturing into the unknown.

i'm certain everything will work itself out just fine and, by next week at this time, i'll be in a much better groove.

but, tonight, i'm kind of antsy.