Anxiety is driven by …

Glancing at car prices in the classifieds and wondering if you’ll ever buy anything less than 7 years old.

Reading stories about how little some real estate agents, mortgage brokers, etc., disclose and wondering if you’ll ever buy a house.

Getting another job application turned down because “we’re only looking locally.” (And why didn’t you have that in the job announcement info? And, don’t you get that getting that job is how I get local?)

Not getting a job after two phone interviews, and wondering if missed communication between your former boss, and the would-be new boss, with the new boss ultimately to blame, is partially at fault.

Having to pass on another job possibility when you find out during an initial phone interview that if you are one of the finalists, you’ll have to travel on your own dime to the in-person interview. (As if Bloomberg PR Newswire doesn’t have money for plane flights for candidates, if it’s a decent-enough job, rolling around in its corporate seat cushions.)

Boredom at a small office with nobody in here having a thing in the way of common chit-chat interests with me.

Worrying that I will wind up getting “stuck” in this small town, humid, conservative bit of southeast Texas, in a job that simply doesn’t come close to challenging me.