Why I will not end up like the lady I saw in the subway station coming back from the ballet, who had a sign saying "I am homeless and have five cats and AIDS":

1. I am not homeless, yet.
2. I do not have five cats.  I do not even have one cat.  I have three dogs, but they are stuffed animals.
3. I do not have AIDS.
4. Arithmetic.  I have a checking account, which contains enough money for me to live on for three or four months.  Also I have other monies, although they are hard or strongly inadvisable to spend, on which I could live for at least two years.  And credit cards; I could build up debt if I needed to.
5. Right now, at least, I have a job.  I get paid once a month.  I am almost certain to get paid at the end of this month.  I am supposed to get paid  for three months after that, assuming I don't leave or get fired.  I think I will be fired when my boss finds a new researcher, but I think he is likely to give me a full month's notice.
6. I have parents.  My parents have an indeterminate amount of money, certainly enough to buy groceries for me to eat, and a house with extra bedrooms.  It would be unpleasant to have to live with them, but preferable to living in the subway.
7. I have friends.  In New York and in other locations.  Some would probably let me stay with them, or rent me a room in their house or apartment for far less than it costs to live in New York.
8. There is COBRA, right?  So I would not get sick and die?  It costs a lot of money, but it is better than getting sick and dying.
9. On a more practical level, I have a college degree.  I have a couple of degrees, actually.  Probably more degrees than the cat lady.  Also skills of some sort, I think.
10. Yes.  Skills.  I can program a computer, kind of.  I am not a bad writer.  Technical things need to be written.  I was a receptionist one summer, and I am okay at answering phones with lots of lines.  I could be like Pam in The Office.  We have similar hair, and I actually really like her wardrobe in the first couple seasons.  Also, I know lots of useless things... I could be a tutor, or I could teach SAT prep classes.  I think I know someone who used to do that.  

There is not a real danger of me turning into the homeless cat lady.  A lot of things would have to go very far wrong for that to happen (although I bet the homeless cat lady would have thought so too, before she was a homeless cat lady).

But there is a real danger of other things.  Like of not having a job.  I have never not had a job.  I have never really had a job, either.  But I've never had nothing.  There is a danger of failing.  I have lived my life in such a way as to minimize that danger, or at least minimize my perception of that danger.  There is a danger of screwing up, of disappointing people, of getting rejected.  There is a danger of being a failure.  I am not supposed to be a failure.  You do not think this because you know me from my blog, where I am a failure all the time, but actually there are a whole group of people who think I am smart and competent and successful, or at least there used to be.  There is a danger that I will not be able to convince anyone else that this is the sort of person I can be.  There is a danger that I am so unlikeable that nobody who interviews me will want to hire me.  I could turn out to be too fat to work in the private sector - every single professional woman in this city is a solid two dress sizes smaller than me, which is actually quite a lot of dress sizes considering that I am not huge - or not know how to put on makeup properly (I cannot even curl my eyelashes without a major incident).  My programming skills could not be good enough.  Somebody asked me at an interview what is my favorite kind of math, and I don't know any math.  I said differential equations, which used to be true, but I have forgotten them.  Also topology.  But this was years ago.  What if I am just not as smart as I used to be?  What if my mother is right and I'm not cut out for a real job?  What if the private sector is for men and women who know how to deal with them?  What if the problem is that I don't wear nail polish?  Am I supposed to wear nail polish?  How do people learn how to shake hands?  Maybe my suits don't fit right, or I'm wearing the wrong tops and accessories with them.  I do not know what a hash table is, and I think I am supposed to.  I have business cards now, but who do I give them to?  What is the reason any company should hire me?  What on earth do I have to bring to the job?  No company has ever hired me.  Maybe I interview badly, or my cover letter is awful, or I am secretly giving off "don't hire me" vibes.  Obviously I am.  I have no more interviews lined up.  What if I am doing something wrong, and I don't know what it is?