No more Athens

I've had a rough week. For starters, I had a few interviews in Cincinnati last week that went REALLY well ... so I thought I had at least one of those jobs in the bag. Adam lives in Cincinnati so that's kind of where I wanted to go since we've been doing the long-distance relationship stuff for a year now. It would be nice to have the option of seeing him more than 4 times a month, but I guess that is not going to happen for a while. On a whim, I found an opening at my old high school the night after my interviews and applied for it online, thinking I wouldn't need to interview there since the Cincinnati jobs were a sure thing. Well, they called less than 24 hours later and I didn't get EITHER of the Cincinnati jobs, and scheduled an interview in Lima on Monday.

I got to my high school all dressed up in a suit and ready for a grilling interview, and the principal and I spent most of the time catching up. He kept me there for 2 hours, and offered me the job on the spot. The job is great ... but I think I'm the only person that's left Shawnee and cried about being offered a job there.

It's one of the best school districts in the Northwest part of the state, and they actually have money to pay teachers an excellent salary. I'll start out about 4k ahead of my friends, and each year I'm there I'll get a 3% increase in pay for the next 5 years. I didn't really feel like I had another option since Mr. Wade gave me 24 hours to think about it, so I took the job the next day. I called Adam that night and cried and cried, because I'd had my little heart set on being in Cincinnati ... he was disappointed, but said he really didn't blame me for taking the job since if he were in my shoes, he would have done the same thing.

Here are the good things about the job:

-I know the district
-I know the teachers
-I will be living with my best friend (who is 23 and recently went through a nasty divorce)
-Her parents own the condo so they are only charging me 100 bucks in rent
-I'll be living 4 miles away from the High School
-Lima is about 45 minutes closer to Cincinnati than Athens
-I'll be close to my family
-I'm making a good amount of money
-I'll be able to SAVE a lot of money
-I am getting a new (used) car in the deal since mine is a pile of junk
-The Benefits package of a teacher simply cannot be beat

Here are the bad things about the job:

-Shawnee doesn't do tuition reimbursement
-ADAM ISN'T IN LIMA
-I'm teaching several classes of chemistry and physics, which I'm not certified (or excited) to teach
-I have to leave Athens

So as you can see, there are obviously far more pros to moving back to Lima than there are cons, but the "con" with the capital letters is really important to me. We talked about it this weekend and there were a few days there when thinking about another year of distance seemed overwhelming and impossible, but as long as we don't focus on how crappy the distance is and how much we miss each other, I don't think anything will change. We'll still see each other on the weekends, and "if" we break up (a big "IF"), I'll be back in Lima with my family and friends to support me and get me through it instead of being alone in a city I don't really like.

I still feel conflicted about it, but I know God put me where He wanted me. I could have turned down Shawnee's offer, but right after I decided to take the job and was standing in the living room, sobbing, I looked out the window and saw an Indigo Bunting land on a daylily in our garden. He sat there for a few seconds looking around, and when he spotted me in the window he held my gaze for a minute and then flew away. For those of you that know me, Indigo Buntings are my favorite bird and that's the first one I've ever seen in Lima ... so I'll take that as a neon sign from God that I made the right choice and need to trust Him a little more faithfully.

I'm still having a hard time coming to grips with this ... I'll probably be leaving Athens at the beginning of August. That fact alone makes me want to cry, but hopefully I'll be so distracted with lesson planning and starting the school year on August 18th that it will soften the blow.

It's been a hard week. I don't know when I became an adult, but when someone figures out how to make it stop please let me know.