Which way is up?

I'm waiting for my house sale to get to the exchange of contracts stage, barely daring to look at properties but at the same time afraid that if I don't put every spare hour into it I shall never find anything in my price range.

I'm looking anywhere up to two hours out of London, including Hastings, Diss, Grantham, Northampton, Dorset, Bristol and Bath.  I'm hoovering up any information I can find about all those places.  I've always wanted to live by the sea, and so Hastings and St Leonards is currently the place I favour, although I have read a lot of mixed reviews about the place.

It's weird, I'm having a lot of dreams about being on buses and trains and not knowing where I am going, about houses with one way stairs and rooms that shrink, scared that prices will suddenly leap up and prevent me from buying where I was to be able to buy.

I have three grown children and a girlfriend to take with me (my son's!  not mine, lol!), and the responsibility of finding somewhere for my estranged husband in the same area.  I'm hoping that the change will be a positive one for all of us, and so I fear making a mistake, choosing the wrong place, and having to pick up the pieces if I do.  Then I get excited and realize how lucky, lucky, lucky I am to still be in a position where I can think about buying a house at all.

Not knowing where I will be in a couple of months is scary, but maybe I needed a kick.  And I'll take the sea and the sound of seagulls over the tarmac and the sound of police cars, any day of the week.