outside the gate.

Okay, so I'm moving back to the west coast after five years of grad school in about four months, because I'm going to be a dissertator and I don't have a job guarantee and my soon-to-be-husband already has a job lined up (because accounting is something that happens regardless of the state of the economy and the enrollment of students in foreign language classes) and, well, I can write a dissertation from anywhere. Especially somewhere that below zero sounds like a make-believe temperature, right?

Except I'm really nervous. It's not a new place to live. I grew up in the same area where we'll be living, so it's not a matter of feeling out of place physically; maybe I would prefer that, though, because I felt out of place when I experienced my first real winter and realized I didn't actually know what a coat was. But there was an easy enough solution for that -- buy a coat where the weather is cold, because they'll sell something much more weather-ready.

So it's not that.  It's just that, well, I've been in academia for a while and I'm nervous that I will feel completely out of my element, without people to make erudite academic jokes and to discuss research or dissertation woes...am I being ridiculous? I've got loads of time to worry about this, and I should be worrying about the 125 item list looming in the ever-nearing future.