The major theme of my few articles on here to date has been that of change. Emotional change, professional change, geographic change etc... I've graduated from college, getting ready to move into the working world and move to a place I've never been before, where I don't know anyone and I'm hours away from the nearest friend or relative. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't terrified, that the mere thought of changing this much didn't make me want to climb back under the covers every morning and just hide there. I'm facing uncertainties of an order of magnitude that I can't even really begin to comprehend. I'm truely taking the first major steps of my life, and I feel like I'm doing so blindly. It's a scary world out there with a floundering tech industry, uncertain political times, a great deal of fear and hostility... and then there's me, the n00b in life, like a jr high football player tossed into an NFL team and told to play with the big kids.

The community that exists here seems a bit more mature (both in age and in personality), many of you seem to have things at least sort of figured out, at least enough to lead stable lives. Many of you have been in the same situation as me. I feel like I need help getting my bearings, that I need some help making sense of the swirling chaos that's all around me. To my friends and family, I put on the brave face, tell them I can handle anything thrown my way, because they often depend on me to help them through their changes... this time however I'm in a new world, one which they can't really help with.