A New Job & Unchartered Territory

The good news is that I will have employment with New England School in the fall! The bad news is that it's only part-time. My official title will be Visiting Lecturer of English, and I'll teach 3 courses per semester with opportunities for summer teaching. I have no idea what courses I'll teach, but I'm prepared for the worst: 3 comp classes (probably at 8:00 a.m.). Let me first say that I'm enormously thankful that I have this job. It's always a nice thing to be employed. It especially helps when one is also trying to get a mortgage loan. This position, however, is unchartered territory for me. I have lots of questions about how I will/won't fit in...Will tenure-track faculty sneer and point at me in the halls? Or, will they simply ignore my existence? Will there be back-stabbing battles to get the best time slots? Will I have to sell my soul to teach a literature course? Most importantly, will I have any opportunity to demonstrate my value as a teacher and scholar to the department? I know that in order to convince them to offer me a full-time or tenure-track position, I'll need to be great in the classroom, try to maintain a research agenda, and be as active as possible within the department community. But, what if that's not enough? I have lots of anxiety about this new position and my overall "fit" in the department, and I have nothing to go on in terms of how to address some of the questions and fears I have. I'm scheduled to meet with the Dean of Humanities when I visit next week, and I'm hoping that she might put some of my worries at ease, while also answering some of the many questions I have about schools, daycares, etc. In the meantime, I have a list of properties to view (including a couple of rentals), an article to revise, and final projects to grade. Too bad that's not enough to keep me from worrying about the future.

Crazy Pills

During the process of prepping for the interview I had at the end of the summer, I realized that I would likely go crazy this fall. Even though I spent two days preparing for every possible question, and even though I had answers prepared, examples ready to give, and good questions to ask, I lay awake at night wondering what else I might be missing. I literally lay awake until 4:00 a.m. one night, and that's when it hit me: this is what it will be like in the fall. This is what the job market will do to me. I will be a crazy (and sleep-deprived) person because I don't have the ability to shut my brain off. When there is uncertainty in my life, I get extremely anxious, to the point that I physically, mentally cannot stop myself from trying to think of all the possible scenarios that might play out.* I know that lots of people say, "Just don't worry about what you can't control," but easier said than done. I'm a control freak. Erego, if I'm not controlling things, I'm crazy.

Knowing this about myself, and knowing that, in Doha (and in many Muslim countries) medical conditions like anxiety, depression, ADHD, etc. are all lumped into the category of mental illness and thus are pretty much ignored (certainly not treated by experts), I knew I had to do something before we left the States. So, while back in College Town for my graduation, I went to see our family physician. He'd seen me last year when I was having severe anxiety problems just before our move overseas. I explained that the anxiety had never really gone away. It would settle for a while (like after we got most of our major settling in done in Doha), but then it would come back with the next big "Thing" (i.e. the last push on the dissertation and the defense). But what I experienced before and just after the job interview was awful. I also told him how my expat experience has been overall--not the best, though I've survived. Ultimately, he believed it would be best to put me on a maintenance medication, something I take daily for the anxiety (and sometimes depression) that I've experienced since moving here. He also gave me a prescription for another anti-anxiety medication to be taken as needed, during severe episodes of anxiety (like the inability to shut my mind off from the worrying, planning, listing, etc.).

So there you have it....I'm on crazy pills. I don't like it, but I have to be honest and admit that they've helped. I truly feel better. I don't know that I've ever been a big believer in the power of anti-depressant/anti-anxiety medication, but I know that my mood is improved. I feel like things roll off my shoulders a bit easier. It's taken some time to get over the fatigue the daily medication has caused, but the overall result is very positive. The bottom line is that I feel less stressed on a daily basis.

Now, this could absolutely change once the full swing of the semester hits and the job list comes out in a few weeks. But for now, I feel like a better, less crazy, me.

* The most recent example is me laying in bed, wide awake, a few nights ago, wondering when it would be okay to start boxing up some things...you know, for our repatriation next summer!

Organized Writing and Thought Fail

Apologies in advance to the lack of organization (possibly coherence) of this post. I feel lucky to be getting/taking the time to post, so I'll take what I can get.

The chaos seems to be increasing on a daily basis. Some days are worse than others, and I expect(ed) things to get more hectic the closer we get to our pack-out date, but Holy Hell Batman! Yesterday was the absolute worst. It's the closest I've ever felt to what might be a panic attack. It's no one thing alone. Rather, it's all sorts of little and big things that fell on my plate at once yesterday. For example, the Sec. of State office sent us the wrong form to authenticate our criminal history reports (my job to figure out how to fix it); our relocation allowance won't be issued until our visa comes is (my job to see how we might expedite the process by having direct deposit paperwork filled out in advance); I was under the impression I'd be teaching a Rhetoric and Composition course for the fall (it turns out that it will be, for all practical purposes, more like a developmental writing course, my job to re-do all my prep work thus far)....you get the idea folks.

On top of these things, I met with the former liberal arts program coordinator for the overseas campus on Monday (he and his wife have recently finished their contracts and returned to the home campus), and he had all sorts of helpful, terrifying tidbits of information. Things like....

• there is no cold water in the villas...water tanks are kept outside, so the temperature of the water is, um, hot, hot, hot. To avoid ruining clothing one must either let the water sit in the washing machine until it's room temperature or pour additional chilled water in the machine. I'm guessing the same goes for bathwater for the kids.
• the sand gets everywhere. I'd heard this, but he explained how this relates to other things, like not being able to help keep your car interior a tad bit cooler by rolling the windows down because the sand will invade your vehicle.
• and Ramadan...I knew about that, we'd heard how it gets tricky to get/eat food during this time, especially in public, but I he explained that this basically means you eat from home the entire time unless you want to join the rest of the town at the restaurants when they finally open after sundown. Um, with three kids, I think not.
• the pools?? They aren't heated. They are CHILLED. That's how freakin hot it is.

There are various other things that have added to the craziness. I feel like my list of things to do is always five times as long as Hubby's and, to some extent, that's often the reality not just my feeling. The main problem is that I've lost my ability to be realistic about a)what deserves to be on the list and b)in what order those things should be listed. Yesterday, it was 2:00 p.m. and I realized that I hadn't eaten anything all day, and the only thing I'd had to drink was a morning cup of coffee. Even worse, I felt compelled NOT to stop and eat anything because there was too much stuff to be done while the baby was napping.

I know I'm a control freak, and I'm trying to get better at asking Hubby to help me with things, but I still sometimes resort to quasi-sabotaging his efforts b/c I can't keep from following up on him and directing the task myself--micromanaging is probably what it is--which defeats the purpose of delegating some of the tasks to him in the first place.

The one main saving grace of the day is that I was able to contact the finance person in Doha, and she indicated that we might be able to get our relocation allowances next week!! You have no idea how big this is! I mean, technically, we are officially unemployed until July 1. Neither of us have had any summer funding, and we've had to take out short-term loans just to make sure we'd have enough money to pay bills in July, since we weren't given any clear information about when we'd get our relocation funds. Making this particular issue more complicated is that I had been given the wrong info from our support office here. All this time, I've been told that we couldn't get our funds until our visa came in. I found out just YESTERDAY that the visa has nothing to do with our funds! The only thing that needs to happen is for our signed contracts to hit the desk of the finance person in Doha! Once I found this out, the finance person was able to quickly track down our contracts and get the ball rolling.

Yesterday, I seriously needed to be talked down from the metaphorical edge. The stress and anxiety are creeping into the daytime hours now, not just preventing me from getting to sleep at night, but making me feel like I'm simply going nuts trying to keep track of and prioritize all the things that need to be done (the list that now includes me completely changing my syllabus and assignments for the writing class). My doctor is increasing the dosage on my medication and he's given me the go-ahead to take it as needed during the day also.

Oh, and did I mention I have a defense date scheduled? Yes, Wednesday, April 7th. Making it official has simply reinforced my anxiety about making sure I get the time I need to finish my revisions in the fall....this has simply reinforced my anxiety about getting as much course prep done as I possibly can now, so that I can put the classes on "auto pilot" once I get there. You get the cyclical nature of all this?? Thought process fail. Control fail. Planning fail.

Getting Anxious

Every other day or so I find myself increasingly anxious about two main things that are or will be coming up soon:

1) trying for our third (and last) baby in just 2 months!! (with my July cycle)
2) going on the job market this fall

With the first one, I'm just scared about the idea of 3 children. My brain knows that everything will be okay. Things get done. Children are provided for, loved, and nobody goes without attention and affection. But, I've only done this for 2 kids so far. I can do 2 kids. We have our routine and everything. I'm already trying to design a daily schedule in an Excel spreadsheet for how the morning routine should work with a third child in the mix (yes, I'm a bit anal/crazy). I'm really starting to get excited about trying to get pregnant again, as I truly enjoy being pregnant (no matter the fatigue, back pain, etc.). But I'm also scared of what may follow: the baby blues again (like I had after E was born), the problems nursing, the feeling of being overwhelmed and out of control. Ultimately, though, we have a plan, one we're comfortable with and believe is optimal for our lives, careers, and family situation.

The job market? Ugh...! I'm just scared, feeling inadequate, unprepared, like a freshman going through some hazing ritual. There's too much on this one for now...it needs a post of its own, which will come soon, right after I turn in this chapter at the end of next week.