Scared Silly

I woke up yesterday morning nearly paralyzed by fear.

What had I started? I had begun looking seriously for a new job, found at least one that I'm excited about and had started telling people that I was in the market.

I had told people.

I tend to be the type of person who mulls and fumes and sits and stews until coming to a conclusion that often catches those I love off-guard. They tease me about it in a gentle, loving manner (she said with the utmost sarcasm that typed words can convey), and I know that I can do something to change this.

So, before the first application has gone out of my hot little computer, I am officially telling the chosen few, "Hey, I'm looking for a new job, and that might mean I leave California." This means that in six weeks or six months if I pack up and move away, no one will stand there looking stressed and stunned.

Consider yourselves warned.

But telling people also means that I have to actually do something about my quest. I can't just tell people I'm looking for a new job and then sit here and do nothing. Telling people forces me to look, leap, apply.

The states with jobs I like (Tennessee, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Oregon) float around in my head, and yesterday, I woke up thinking, "I know nothing about those places! How can I possibly leave?"

Though I've lived in a city, lived in Boston, lived in L.A., I never really left home for more than a few months. In sum? I've lived in the same town FOR. MY. ENTIRE. LIFE.

Knowing that, does it make more sense why this is all so simultaneously exciting and terrifying?

I work at the library I used as a child.

I work where I volunteered as a teenager.

My parents'and grandparents' former co-workers come in the library and recognize me. It's a small town as you can get in a city of 100,000.

I have to get out of here.

But there are moments when I don't see how I ever will.

I admitted my fears to my mom. She hugged me, with a glisten in her eye, and assured me it would all be alright.

Then I realized, if I wasn't scared, then I would be completely insane. And I'm not that far gone.

There is some comfort in being afraid.