Rollercoaster

The past two weeks have been an emotional rollercoaster for me.

It's hard to be coming to the end of a job that I loved for over 7 years. Some of the people I work with are like family, and I know that some of them will disappear from my life very soon. It's hard on all of us to go to work every day knowing that our time together is quickly running out. And although I am grateful to have a paycheck until the end of February, I am quickly growing tired of this limbo land. I think we're all ready for it to go ahead and end, already.

Then sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night in a panic....what if I can't find a job? What if I can only find something that I hate? What about our (mine and my husband's) health insurance? Can we afford Cobra? For how long? And so on and so forth. The other day I came home after a particularly trying day and burst into tears. I am ordinarily a cheerful, positive person and my husband was alarmed. He assured me that we will get through this together, and that everything is going to be ok. I love that man so much! He is always supportive no matter what. I sometimes have the nagging worry that I am letting him down, which I know is silly, but it definitely takes both of our incomes to make ends meet and my income is going away. He has been cutting out all unnecessary spending (we both have) but I feel guilty when I see him pinching pennies. I don't mind doing without luxuries myself.

Then, sometimes, I feel a strange sense of relief.....my job had become increasingly stressful because of the new boss I got last March, and I can't help but be glad that pretty soon I will no longer have to deal with him. I have had extra time off, because I have personal days that I either must take or lose...and the extra time away from the responsibility of the job has felt good. It has been nice being at home and spending more time with our pets. I've also had more time to cook from scratch, which means we're eating better and saving money to boot. I've also been knitting more, which I enjoy and it seems to help keep the stress level down. In a couple of weeks I plan to go to Raleigh, NC to spend a few days with my inlaws (something I rarely have had time to do in the past few years) and it should be a welcome break.

There has been one happy development....I finished my resume, and heard from a friend about a management opportunity in a bookstore. I submitted an application and my resume and got a call from the manager less than 24 hours later...and I have an interview on Tuesday! I got the call from her last night, and happy tears were immediately followed by fear...what if I don't make a good impression? What if I do, and the job doesn't pay enough to meet my needs? If it does pay enough, what if they can't wait for me to finish out the closing process at my current job? What if the people there don't like me....what if, what if, what if...

I want off this rollercoaster! Oh how I hope that these fears are put to rest soon!