Seasonally affected

Man.  I really am sick of the snow.  I envy the southern states because of their approach to precipitation in the winter--everything shuts down so people don't have to be on the roads.  No matter how old I get, driving in this weather gives me the worst anxiety.  I can handle driving three miles into town, but even then, it feels so pointless when so few customers even venture in.  I just feel like Miss Whiny-Pants.  I had a shortage last night, a considerable one--20 bucks--and that never happens to me.  Never.  A few cents, maybe a dollar on very rare occasions.  But twenty whole dollars?  And I have no idea where the mistake was.  I can't remember any transactions that I could have screwed up.  Dustin was talking about how he's been forgetting things a lot more lately, and he said something along the lines of how he'd better stop putting off going to therapy.  It seems he attributes his lack of remembering to his displeasure working there.  Which is not all that surprising.  But it got me thinking how one thing can consume us.  I have my own tendency to turn something that only affects one part of my life and allow it to feel like the ONLY thing that matters in my life.  As if that one imperfect piece were offsetting the thousands of other happy things in my life.  It shouldn't he like that.  The more trivial things shouldn't overshadow the more important things.  Then again, work does constitute a valued portion of our lives.  Our professional identities reinforce our egos.  They allow us a sense of worth.  Purpose.  Routine.  Income.  Pride.  So being unhappy at one's job is definitely going to affect other areas of a person's life.  Even though I try to compartmentalize my working life, teaching life, student life, and personal life, there is inevitable overlapping, and I cannot always just shut up the unhappy part of myself that feels uncomfortable and unhappy with the way things are.  The biggest challenge is deciding upon a step to take.  Which direction will provide the shift that I'm looking for?  Which option is going to work?  For me, changing careers was the option I chose, but that is not an immediate shift; it takes time.  I have a year left before I can begin working in this field, and I am still trying not to worry about tomorrow or next week, let alone an entire twelve and some months.  I have that feeling again--as if I am not doing enough but doing too much.  It's hard when the things I don't have control over are the ones that bother me.  Or when I feel like I don't have any options.  I just wish I could find another part time job close by that pays a little better than the gas station, but doesn't require me learning an entirely new skill set.  But in the meantime, I have coffee to finish and clothes to put on and transactions to conduct and work to be done.  It's never done.  And I can't wait until at least what I accomplish feels like it's giving something valuable to a community.