V-39: The problem with being monolingual

Is that it considerably narrows your employment options.

Today a couple of adverts for jobs I'd really enjoy have been sent my way. One in particular was really up my street, was part time but paid well enough for that to be ok, which would leave me time to do the research I want to do and finish my MSc easily. But there is a problem.
They want someone who is fluent in German as well as English. Which I am not at this precise moment in time.

Looking at the job I completely understand why, it involves gathering information from the Austrian media, and there wouldn't be the time to have to look up 3 words a sentence. I just wish I hadn't given up German after my GCSEs.

Ridiculously both my parents are multilingual (even if that includes dead languages) but my sister and I aren't. I can survive in German and French but no more than that. Next to The Beard (who is a polyglot) I feel woefully inadequate and I am downright embarrassed at how difficult I am finding it to overcome the mental barrier when trying to speak German.

Part of the reason I feel like this relates to my current status in our house as main breadwinner, something which I am unlikely to retain in the short term, because jobs at international organisations are difficult to get.
I have given myself a deadline of 3-6 months to achieve a level of German that is perhaps not quite fluent but is better than average, which would at least broaden my employment prospects considerably. My biggest challenge is just remembering the words - hopefully when I don't have a million and one other things going on I'll have more capacity for that!

For now I have to keep telling myself that this is only a temporary situation, this monolinguistic limbo. At a time when I am feeling slightly overwhelmed by the field I want to move into, adding a language barrier isn't really helping. I just hope that it isn't too late to learn again - once I've got German down I intend to learn French and then possibly Spanish, and of course at some point I will finally learn Swedish properly.

I'm told immersion helps immensely. I really hope that is true!