Ugh, it’s been a bit of a rough time right now, I’m not going to lie. As much as I was trying to keep this blog just about reading (and occasionally writing), it’s not always easy to do so.

I have dealt with depression and anxiety for all of my adult life (and most of my teens). When I have large bouts of that, my creativity is completely stifled. Caput. Zilch. Nada. And I hate that, because there are usually lots of things that I want to do, that I wish I could force myself to do, which only feeds back into the loop of anxiety and depression.

This blog post will mostly be rambling. Sorry for that.

So what’s leading to this? Good question. First off, I don’t remember if I had mentioned this previously, but I quit my job two months ago. Remember that stressful job that was making it hard to take care of my family and enjoy life? Gone. I did this without having another job to go to afterwards, which was probably foolish, but at the time seemed like the thing to do. I had been so scared of pulling the plug or taking the plunge (insert your favorite taking-a-risk metaphor here), so I just did it.

This gave me time to enjoy my family vacation, as well as take another trip to visit family and give me plenty of time to get my daughter ready to start middle school (which is a pretty big transition from elementary school, for any non-U.S. folks who might be reading this – I’m not sure what the equivalent would be where you live, but here, it’s a pretty big deal). I had some savings set aside to pay for things and figured I would be able to find another job fairly soon.

Two months and many, many resumes later – no job.

I didn’t expect this to be as completely demoralizing as it has been. I didn’t realize how much of my self-worth was tied into being able to help provide for my family and being able to basically buy whatever I want (within reason, of course – we’re not fabulously wealthy, but now I have to think hard before I buy a soda at the gas station, which I never had to worry about before). And yes, I know that many, many, MANY people around the world have much bigger and more devastating problems, but that just makes me feel worse – feeling guilty for complaining when really, I have it pretty good.

Put that together with all the ugliness that is in the world, from the shootings to the terrorism to the increasingly grotesque political campaigning in my country (seriously, can it just be November already so we can move on from this?) – life just seems like a complete mess. And now that I’m not distracted by the many, many hours spent at that job, I have to pay attention to it because it seems to be everywhere.

I’m trying to push myself out of this, which is harder that I feel like it should be, which means that I am going to try to blog more often, even if it’s just a quick note about what’s going on in my life. Of course, I will also still try to post my normal book stuff, but I will also post some about writing (which I’m also trying to get back into) and other things. I keep going back into my reading slump, which is why I will finish this year no where near my GoodReads goal, so I will by necessity have to blog about other things. This blog will become a bit more journal-like, although I will try to keep it a bit more upbeat than what I’m feeling at the moment.

And when I can’t be upbeat and don’t have a book thing to talk about, I will show you cute pictures of my cat, like this one. Because everyone loves cute cat pictures, right?

She loves curling up in my purple chair!

I guess what I am saying is that I am very grateful to the people who do follow this blog – you guys haven’t given up on me yet! This is something of an apology as well for not being around all that much and a promise that I am trying to get better at it, even if the content might change a bit. Maybe it will be a change for the better? Who knows. I guess we’ll see.

Categories: Drabbles

Tags: anxiety, cat pictures, depression, job hunt