Joining the Family

Had my first day of work yesterday and it went well. I didn't get fired on my first day, for example, even though I had this sort of irrational fear that I would (not while there, of course. I wasn't getting "we're going to fire you as soon as we can" vibes or anything). I was pretty tired by the end of the day, and by tired I mean tired of sitting in a chair: one thing about those eight hour days is that it takes some serious sitting muscles. There was also the whole getting-up-at-five-am-and-meeting-thirty-people-before-lunch tired. But that's to be expected, and it's even kind of pleasant, or will be when I get along a little further and it is accompanied with a sense of having accomplished something.

The part about starting a new job that I'd forgotten, or that I have gotten more sensitive to, is the absorbing of a whole new body of information. This is something that gets harder as I get older, or is harder because I already have a lot of things I want to be doing with my day. At the start of a new job I always feel a little like I've stumbled into someone else's family reunion and suddenly I'm expected to become a permanent member of that family and also the family archivist. All while I'm still kind of scanning the horizon for my own family reunion. (The workforce: a vast park full of picnics, apparently.)

Well, I'm off to roast some hot dogs. For someone's else's family. Cheerio.