There is no way to sugar coat the depression that can tag along with being unemployed. I’ve done a pretty decent job of holding it at bay for almost a month, that’s pretty good for me. I thought that I was going to be relatively ok because I was able to get a temporary job within about a week of losing my last one, but it’s still managed to find a path straight to me. I knew it was there lurking underneath because for the last month every part of my body hurts. My muscles and joints are weathering the emotional turmoil in my brain and the constant pain just adds to the depression. This is the part of unemployment that’s the worst.
I have a very deep need within me to do something worthwhile and useful. I need to make a big impact on our world and having been laid off now four times in 13 years, I certainly feel like I’ve failed at all of it. The best way I’ve been able to describe my job in architecture over the last decade is that I feel like a factory worker in dress shoes. I’m just there to complete a task. The only problem is that the career is sold to college students as a career where we have the ability to make an impact or at least be able to contribute. I’ve not been able to.
I’m angry about that. I’m angry that I’ve worked with, and for, some really frustrating people who don’t really seem to care or are simply unable to. I do need to say that I’ve also worked with some really great people and am glad to call them my friends. Unfortunately, they were co-workers and not the boss, otherwise I’d still be working with them!
I’m certainly in that middle-aged category where a person may stop and take a good look at their life, I’m not an exception. I’ve been struggling with this for the last 4+ years and feel good about myself that I took steps to seek out professional help, something I’m grateful for now that I really need support. I’ve never held a job for very long and really didn’t like this last one that I had, so it’s not so much losing the job itself that’s the issue as much as I just don’t know what to do with the rest of my life.
The internet is full of stories from people who don’t know what they want to do. However, no one really has the answer. YouTube is full of 20-somethings who claim to have discovered the career secret and there is more than one Ted Talk on the subject but they don’t really have the answer at all. Some say to just follow your passion, but I think that advice can be pretty crappy and in some cases dangerous. I’m really annoyed at all the hype out there in the world about how people should just chuck it all and start their own business. Or the other side of that hype that tells people to just take some time and enjoy life and figure it out.
Hello world!!! Some people NEED jobs. I need it to have a place to go during the day. I need it so my husband isn’t disappointed in me for not working. I need it to have a paycheck to cover that monthly student loan payment and cover the car that I need to get to replace my failing one. I need it so that I have at least some feeling of being able to support myself if needed and not end up on the sidewalk without a house or food. Not working or not getting a paycheck while chasing a dream is pretty much a fairy tale for most people. If it were so easy to do, I’d know a whole bunch of people who are doing it, and I don’t.
My depression really kicked in hard last week as I was about to get back onto a website to apply for a job. It’s a job in architecture doing pretty much the same thing I’ve been doing except for a different entity. It was working as an architect for a dedicated campus. These exist for government buildings (there’s an architect for the Capitol building), universities, medical campuses and similar types of organizations. This would mean that instead of random clients, the clients would be users of all those facilities.
I had started the application thinking that it would at least be a different experience and that it might be ok, but as I read through the job description again, I simply found myself feeling more and more depressed. It hit me hard over the span of about 5 minutes. I just heard this voice from within me saying over and over again – “I don’t want this job”.
Despite having been through unemployment several times, I don’t have a sure-fire way to combat this deepening depression. I think it’s been there for a while because ever since I got laid off, I’ve been eating non-stop and food is my drug of choice. I don’t even want to try to put on some of my dress clothes because I’m pretty certain I’ve gained a few pounds in just three weeks.
I can say that there are ways to help lessen the depression, one of them is to have a schedule to adhere to. Sleeping whenever, eating whenever, doing whatever doesn’t help. That said, I’ve got a temporary job working from home. I need to be at my computer by 7am. That’s a set schedule. However, even the job is making me depressed. It’s more of the same that I’ve been doing, but without the right tools to be efficient or the attention of the team to answer questions about what’s going on with the project. Without those, I’m just plodding along, trying to do my best to help where I can. The good part of this is that I’m working for good, caring people. I don’t agree with their business methods, but there’s honestly nothing wrong with them, it’s just different than what I’d do. It’s also very nice to be working for kind people instead of ego-driven narcissists.
I created a giant to-do list to help keep me focused for when this depression hit, but that’s not helping a whole lot at the moment because I’m feeling overwhelmed between looking for a good job, working a temp one, supporting my husband’s new opportunity, thinking about moving and trying to find myself in between all of that.
I started this website several months ago because I felt that I had something to say. I’m not sure that it’s much different than what anybody else out there doing this same thing is saying, but I decided to do it anyway. I’d say about the only thing that’s helping me at the moment is writing this down and sending it out there. I don’t want any feedback on it, I think I just need to get it out of my system so that I can clear my head for a moment and try to move beyond this.
