Out of my depths, treading water

Spent the last few days trying to get sorted out and unpacked and get living arrangements made.  Apparently Dragon's Egg is a frozen wasteland, a lot different from what I'm used to.  I'm told there's not a lot of settlers actually *living* on the surface right now, but my info is sketchy.  I never was one to keep up with all the news of the 'Verse outside my little sphere of influence, and my time with Elsoph kept me mostly insulated from any concerns save power converters and ion drives.

So now, I sit.  I wait.  I read the Cortex, trying to get some sort of handle on what all has happened in my absence, learn about this new world I've come back to, learn what happened to my old world, learn what happened to my loved ones.

It's also a good time to think about my life, where I'm going, what I'm doing.  I'm not as young or as painfully optimistic as I once was, working on the Core wore that away long ago. Certainly I'm no bitter cynic yet, but maybe not so obnoxiously cheerful as I once was.  I'm still the best damn mechanic (technically, thanks to Elsoph's wrangling, 'Engineer Class A-II' ) that you've ever seen, but I find I need to learn how to better live in this world than hiding out and building stuff.

I want to protect my loved ones, like Sea does.  I want to not be afraid of danger when (not if) it comes knocking.  Learn to shoot, not just whack things with a wrench.  I've already got the first lesson, down, I think. I've learned that I can do whatever I put my mind to do, and I'll do whatever I have to do.  Because that's who I am.

It feels strange to have Seana be the busy one for once.  There's so much going on, and I'm beginning to feel useless here.  Maybe that's my karmic payback for being away for so long; now it's my turn to wait.  I want to help and I don't know how.  So all I can do is read the news and watch my old Vids from Earth-that-Was.

Guess I'll put in one of those old outer-space shows.  They always make me laugh and cheer me up 'cos their tech is SOOOOOO wrong. I'll curl up with Haley, thankfully she still remembers me, and nibble on some cookies.