It's been an extremely tumultuous two years, or even more than that.  My career as a teacher has been so incredibly stressful and barely doable. In Spring of 2019 I started taking classes in another field, and it's a good thing I did, because everything really hit the fan during the pandemic and got much worse.  I had a breakup in 2020, then my job ended-I got another job and it was an even worse nightmare.  An attorney got involved. I won my case and cleared my reputation, but was unemployed for six months of 2021. Some of it was pandemic-related.

During my employment gap, I returned to school and finally graduated in my new field. I'm ready to go and start applying.  I also got a job in August, which is OK, but there is virus all over the place and I'm exposed to it all of the time, so it's touch and go. My boss has Covid right now.  It's stable but I'm bored to death, and the kids can be pretty abusive.

Now that I'm ready to change, I am totally starting to panic.  I don't know if I am clinging to the security or what...I mean there is not really much to lose. The career never paid enough and I can't afford to do it anymore. I simply can't pay the bills on what I make and have lived in my family's rental house for a decade. It's not working.

So what am I so scared of? The illusion of "security"?  I don't know.  My next step in the post-graduation process is to update my Linked In, which is not such a big deal...except my boss is on my Linked In.  I don't want to be out of a job before I have another one. It's been a crazy few years, just hanging on by my fingernails. I'm hopeful about the future, and scared too.  A lot of people in my life seem to not want me to move forward, but I must.  And that student loan is going to need to be paid back!  My stomach dropped when my career adviser wrote to me and said: "Congratuations, you a looking employer-ready!"  Why does this scare me SO much?  The familiar is not really even healthy or functional and was never really working anyway.