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New job, new cast of co-worker characters, new set of acronyms and idioms to go with the new subculture of production. New kinds of problems to try to solve, new chaotic situations out of which to bring order. I've been an editor for so long, it had become burned into my identity, and officially at least, I'm not an editor anymore. We shall see how readily I shed that skin.

It seems like a lot of changes are happening all at once, because they are. The star wheel is turning from summer to fall, and just today the pine trees were shedding their golden needles like crazy. It's a downer in a sense, gravity and the receding sun's rays doing their thing, but I love the look of fresh pine straw on the ground.

The cooler temperatures are not harsh just yet, so the cold is not a problem either. Wear long pants, put on a sweater. It gets dark pretty early, so there will be no more eight o'clock bike rides deep into Delaware County with plenty of time to loop back home while the cars can still see the green flash of light that is me on le Trek.

I'm starting a new job in a different department of the same company, although the "same" company is morphing into a whole new starship publishing enterprise, so the department I was in for almost ten years will not be the same old department much longer. Even if I wasn't the new/old kid on the second floor, it would not be business as usual. Good news or bad news, you tell me.

I chose to disappear from the fourth floor quickly rather than make it a long, drawn-out leave-taking. It's not like I'm leaving the company or the big small town that is Central Swingstate. I just need to be here now rather than dwell on where I am not.

The plus side of not making many close connections with people at work is that when it's time to move on and call it a day, there are fewer attachments to break. I know that sounds harsh, or a lame rationalization, or fair-weather friendly, but it's not intended that way. I'm not the jilted boyfriend who says, after the fact, that he never really like her anyway. I'm more like the survivor of a shipwreck who washed up on a desert island and lived a good, long time on the nearest beach, in no small part because of help from the other inhabitants of that island. Now another tempest has washed me out to sea, and I'm learning to live on the fruits and nuts that grow on the next island.

Since I did not choose to make this particular move at this particular time, I have less at stake in its being the absolutely best thing ever to happen. Even an intentional change of situation has only an even chance of success: either it will or it won't work out to my advantage, however that is measured. As it says in the middle school math book, just relax and do the best you can. When the next challenge, opportunity, or long strange trip comes about unexpectedly, it's not all that different: I don't know where this story is going, but I will do what I can to make it go somewhere good.

That's just the thing. Being ejected from my comfortable seat in Editorial Land after all these years might just be the best thing that ever happened to me. Yeah, like it "happened to me" and I had nothing to do with it. I probably sowed the seeds of this departure/exile/deportation/ostracism many times over. Paraphrasing that most revered and respected of elder statesmen, Trickie Dick Nixon, they won't have Sven Golly to kick around anymore.

If anything, I'm anticipating a whole new professional adventure, and in the Joseph Campbell sense, you don't pick your adventures, they pick you. So I'm game. Let's see what kinds of trials and tests, temptations and traps, hidden helpers and hoodwinking hindrances lie in wait.