”Overwhelming” can mean so many different things.

Lately, when asked about how my new job, my new apartment, this new chapter in my life is going, all I can say is, ”Overwhelming!”

I’m not unhappy. Or dissatisfied. If anything, I should be elated. It has been a long, agonizing year, but I have finally found my way to greener pastures. My life is changing, has changed, will change. Things are looking up.

It’s just that I’m a little shell-shocked. All this change has hit me like that parking lot bar that slammed right into the crown of my head so many years ago. Like I wasn’t paying any attention, and then ”Bam!”

Except I was paying attention. I knew I was getting into something new, different, challenging. I know I’ll swim… eventually. But right now it just feels like I’m doing a whole lot of treading water, and going absolutely nowhere. I can’t see the coast, and I’m a little scared that I’ll drown before I find my way.

It is so weird that: 1) People actually expect something of me now. Other than a pretty PowerPoint slide. “No pressure,” they say, but man am I feeling the pressure. 2) No one is giving me any directions. Wait… I’m supposed to figure all this out… by myself?! 3) I have nothing to be unhappy about anymore. I have spent so much of my conscious life having things to complain about that I am suddenly lost in this feeling of… satisfaction? If I complain about anything right now, all I’d do is make myself seem snarky and ungrateful.

Life is strange. I don’t really know how to explain it. It is all just a little… overwhelming.