First Day Jitters

Lest you think everything in my life is awesome at the moment, let me tell you about my pre-bedtime anxiety. Tomorrow is my first day in this office. The head of our European division. I'm an engineer, I know our company engineering, I've taught our company engineering to hundreds of students and clients, and I can talk all day on engineering. 

But tomorrow I enter as two things: an American in the very heart of Europe, and as someone reporting into marketing. Two topics, one could argue, I know very little about. I'll share an office filled with tax, finance, insurance and marketing people. For the first time in my life, I'll be out of the field that I've learned and worked and taught in for 13 years. 

And so I agonize over the outfits, still on shelves as there are only 6 hangars in the closets, well out of my reach. I carefully lay the first and second choice outfits on the back of the couch.  I plan Wednesday's outfits as well, as there is a lunch then. 

I'll wear my courage giving Cleveland heart necklace and my gold circles earrings and my red shoes. I map out the bus routes. I pack my red bag carefully with the requested strawberry twizzlers, my favorite computer mouse, the little desk things I brought, and my handbag, checking carefully to ensure my credit cards and ID are still there. I review the dwindling iced coffee cans, and select which one I'll drink on the bus. 

Tomorrow is a beginning I feel woefully unprepared for. I was raised to be respectful and kind. But I know Europeans have a different culture and norms and behaviours. What if I greet someone in the wrong French tense? Or make a faux paux waiting for coffee? What will I do for lunch? Who will I talk too? Will I get locked out in the stairwell by accident? 

I read once that if you're given a seat at the table, don't ask why, just pull up a chair. I'm going into tomorrow confident that I'm the right person for this job. That I'll add value and find my way. That I'll be supported and encouraged along the way. I'm trying hard to pull up the chair. But right now it seems like the chair is stuck.