When Sleep Won't Come

I'm in a bad place.

I can't sleep, I more irritable than normal. I've been eating pretty much non-stop. I have a very short fuse lately.

Things have to turn around sooner or later, don't they? You'd think. But everytime I think we're back on the upswing we find a new low. "We," an interesting choice of words. I'm really only talking about myself here. The royal "we" I guess.

The details aren't important or maybe they are and I just don't want to type them all out. I already re-live them every night when I try to sleep. My mind doesn't have an off switch. I'm only even writing this because I went to bed an hour-and-a-half ago and wound up back downstairs, again unable to find the calm needed to drift off.

I don't know what to do or how to get things going again. We had been holding the family finances together by threads as it was and now have lost the rental income and are down nearly $400 per month in income. That's a lot of money.

Meanwhile, in May I thought for sure I'd have my pick of two lucrative jobs. Instead, I somehow wound up getting offered neither one. Any pipe dream I had of working for FanSided, the network I've devoted nearly five years to, is dead.

So last week, my mother-in-law showed me a classified ad that a local newspaper is hiring a sports editor. Finally, a job that I not only want, but am actually very well qualified for. I cleaned up my resume, wrote a dynamite cover letter, even got a letter of recommendation from FanSided. I emailed the Editor-in-chief, attaching all of my information and then dropped hard copies in the mail to him in case the attachments wouldn't open for some reason. For me, it was only a question of whether or not I would screw up the interview.

Instead, the ad still runs in the paper every day and no one has called me. I am starting to lose confidence here.

So between the rental house being vacant and for sale, my lack of a job, our rapidly dwindling financial reserves, and the daily pressures of family life, I'm in a pretty good funk here.

I don't know what to do, but I'm looking all around this tunnel and I don't see even a flicker of light.