Changing Tides

I've been feeling unsettled for the last week or so - ever since I got back from my trip. Picking fights with DH, being impatient with Jenna, overanalyzing the little things, and obsessing about ways my life could be different.

These things all tend to be common symptoms I experience when I'm feeling anxious.

What am I anxious about, praytell?

I have a job interview today at 1pm. The school social work job I applied for almost 2 months ago. I had heard through the grapevine that the district had decided not to fill it due to budget constraints, but lo and behold, the assistant principal called me up on Tuesday. There are 3 candidates for the job, so clearly I don't have it in the bag, but I'm feeling pretty optimistic.

And also pretty scared.

If I am offered the job, I will take it, which will mean saying goodbye to my 5 years of part-time work. I can't imagine I would go back until I'm closer to retirement, many decades from now. I've worked really hard to maintain my part-time status over the years - despite much pressure from my current employer to go full-time. I've stayed part-time for 2 reasons:

1) For Jenna
2) For the next baby

As I've been considering this move to full-time work, it's forced me to take a look at these two reasons and really think about where they stand, and where my life IS, as opposed to where I'd hoped it would be.

1) Obviously, Jenna is growing. She is not a baby, nor a toddler, or even a preschooler anymore. She is 5, in kindergarten, and has fully embarked on her school journey. She is in school every day from 8:30 - 3:30pm where she is thriving. I want to continue to be available for after-school activities, currently piano lessons and Daisy scouts, and I want enough flexibility to be able to participate in school events - such as the upcoming Thanksgiving feast next Wednesday. But do I really need to be part-time for her sake anymore? Would she even notice the change in my schedule? (It would be fairly minimal, really, and would impact mostly the morning routine.)

2) The New Baby. That much anticipated, highly sought-after, desperately wanted second child that has always been somewhere on the horizon keeping me from, well, from making lots of important decisions. In my head, the thought process has been this -- why take a full-time job when I might get pregnant again sometime in the future, and would want to go back down to part-time? It's been one of the ways in which I keep myself logistically and emotionally open to the possibility that one day our family will expand. Every time I got a positive pregnancy test over the last 4 years I've said to myself, "See, THIS was the reason you stayed part-time." So in some ways it feels like taking the plunge back into a 40 hour work week is acknowledging the incredibly sad reality that it might never happen that way for me again. I might never have that second child. Reason #2 for remaining part-time not only doesn't currently exist, but might never exist. And therefore, should it remain a reason???

I only have this one life to live. I've spent FAR more time and energy than I've wanted to over the past 4 years in the baby-making mode. I don't want to spend another 4 stuck here. I can't. I don't think my marriage can withstand that, and I don't want Jenna to have a mom who is in constant grief mode.

This quote by Anais Nin is really speaking to me right now:

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom"

I feel like I'm at that precipice. That point at which me remaining tightly wrapped around my hope and dream of another child has become too painful, and there is too great a risk that it is going to cause permanent damage to me, to my marriage, and to my daughter. It is terrifying to think about staying here for too much longer, yet equally scary to consider letting go.

In some ways, taking this full-time job is letting go. Acknowledging that staying where I'm at is more risk than branching out. I can't quite bring myself to call it "blossoming" yet - but maybe one day it will feel that way. I sure hope so!

Wish me luck!