Tuesday, July 30

Unemployment 101 :: A Long Introduction

If you've found yourself unemployed (or underemployed) life can be especially boring. If, like me, you find yourself drowning in a mixture of not only dull unemployment, but also achingly more difficult depression, then you probably feel (to at least a degree) that slowly but surely life is becoming less worth living and you've failed at life.

"Get an education they said, make money they said"
I think this is particularly true of, though not limited to, those of us in our early to mid-twenties (oh my god I'm in my mid twenties...) finding ourselves in a quarter life crisis, and anyone else who was raised to believe that going to college was the way to get a good job and not flip burgers or wait tables for the rest of your life, who, now that we're graduated and not getting jobs, often for years, we find ourselves doing just that because we actually can't get a job at all; good or otherwise.
And if you're now refusing "menial" labor and feeling the crushing sense of failure and hopelessness that is therapy-needed depression, it's likely you do something similar to what I've found myself guilty of for months now.

Sleep late and feel like a brainless zombie when you do wake up, wake up with a feeling of complete lack of motivation ("why should i get up, I have nothing to do") and spend the vast majority of the day on the verge of tears-- especially when searching through job openings, none of which you're qualified for, yet you apply anyway and never hear back-- avoid people because you know you'll talk about how broke and miserable you are, exhaust the visual resources that are Netflix instant, Hulu, & Amazon Prime (and, of course, use other people's accounts to each because they cost money), want to break down sobbing every time you see food you want or an ad for Ikea because you can't afford it, and then stay up till four a.m., zoned out in front of the tv, games, or scrolling through Pinterest, probably in tears again. 
Sleep eventually, probably medically induced and unpleasant, zombie wake, repeat.