Difficult Nights

I am no longer in control of my body.

Last night, I had this crazy dream--well nightmare, really, that my supervisor came to me and told me that she was setting me up for bumping rights. This is a convention used by union employees to basically take over someone else's job who is lower seniority than you.

The dream brought me straight out of sleep, and right out of bed. I don't want to displace another worker who likely needs her job as much as I do. The dream woke me about 2:30am, and I was unable to calm down from it until about 4am. Then finally settled into fitful sleep (sleep 15 minutes, wake, sleep 15 minutes, wake) until about 7:30. Then it took me 2 hours to get ready for work, because the stress of not sleeping and the stress from the dream was just too much to give me the proper rest I needed.

The reality is that when this new computer system goes up, the supervisor has no idea what I'll be doing, because the computer will basically take my job away from my hands and put it in the hands of someone with a much higher classification, where I might be able to fight for working out of class--which could net me quite a bit of money, but then I'd have to basically retire, because management wouldn't want me around -- labelled as a troublemaker, even though a fancy lawyer would likely take it all. It entire affair would likely cost me any opportunity to stay in the job that I'm in.

So, after sleeping 3 hours tonight, I am wakeful again--have taken a sleeping pill, which hasn't helped, and now drinking milk and posting here, which might give the pill a chance. I'm hopeful. I can't live like this, though.

I've always had difficulty keeping jobs. I've never been much for getting "dressed for success", and prefer jeans to tight clothes and nylon hose. I'm scared for my job, and I'm scared for my life. Even the cards are telling me that there's a new job just around the pike, but I seriously don't want to have to change. There have been too many changes in my life, some good for me-some had negative impacts, and I'm at a point in my life where change causes really serious stress to the point of illness--no sleep exacerbates the problem.

I've basically decided to sit back and wait and see what happens. If the world falls apart, I might have to take a different job at the county office where, while it's true, I'd make more money, the clientele suffer from entitlement attitude, which is just too much for me to work with. If all else fails, I'll have to farm myself out to the companies who deal with the people where I work, and make a job of my own design, where I could make a ton of money doing medical billing to the program I currently work for--which would ensure that I could work at home--or I could farm myself out to the parents who need help for their kids and become a referral point. It's a feasible plan, but would require a lot of upfront work in sales, and I'm not sure of the legal implications--would I need liability insurance? Would it be worth my time? Could I sit back and be able to perform with alacrity the sorts of issues that I surely would be pressed into as a parent liaison to the program?

So you see, there are lots of questions that I seriously don't have the answers to, and I can't "give out my card" now because it would be a conflict of interest.

So I feel stuck. Darned if I do, darned if I don't, so I plan to sit tight until the world comes to an end and hope that somebody comes up with a job I can do based on my physical limitations with this tendonitis and lower back pain.

We'll see what transpires.