So I’ve spent the past few days doing something I absolutely hate: filling out job applications. In the past almost two months, I have filled out and sent six or seven job applications for teaching positions in schools in about a 40-minute driving radius of my home. There are no words for how much I loathe filling out job applications. Writing down the same information over and over and over again, the same data that is already contained in my resume. I especially hate filling out application forms by hand; my hand always shakes for some reason. The banality of the action annoys me but what else am I to do?  Every summer but one since my daughter was born, I have gone through this routine: filling out, printing, mailing, applying, and interviewing. I was offered a position last year, by a former colleague, the same day that I interviewed for it, but…I wasn’t settled on it. Didn’t have peace about it. So I politely declined and wished her the best of luck with whoever she did end up hiring. And I truly hope that it did work out well and they hired just who they needed.

Now, here I go again. I have an interview on Thursday and I am, honestly, terrified of the idea that they might offer me a job. Why terrified, you ask? Because it is change. A big one. Because I have spent the last three-and-a-half years building a life at home with my daughter, caring for and teaching her, taking care of our home, and figuring out how to balance our life on only my husband’s income from teaching and pastoring, and I have managed it. We do not have much, this is true, but we have what we need, and, while we need to be wise and frugal, we do not go without.

So, though I knew it would be an eventuality, the thought of going back to work makes me nervous and even a little bit apprehensive. It presents a brand-new set of changes to get used to and learn how to balance, particularly with our daughter. Me going back to work full-time will necessitate day-care and preschool for her, which will also necessitate her being potty-trained (against which she is adamantly set and insists that she is not ready for at the moment), though I know she can do it. It will require a new routine of bedtimes and wake-ups for her and for me, travel planning and budgets, as well as less wiggle room for visits and playdates except on weekends and the propensity for a greater need for help with our little one on any given day, should she get sick or something unexpected.

So, yes, it would be a whole new passel of changes to adjust to. I know that, really, I am putting the camel before the boat as I have not even had an interview right now, but this is the way my brain works. Laying out all of the possibilities and the have-to’s that would come along with them. Honestly, though, I want what is best for my family and I will do my best as my part to accomplish that.