Public service announcement

As a blogger I feel a certain responsibility to address serious topics every now and then. Dooce has not shied away from discussing her struggles with depression and, by doing so, has reached many among her readership who may not have had the courage to get the help they needed. So in the spirit of full disclosure, I need to tell you that have been suffering from a debilitating case of TJSP for over a year now. TJSP is Total Job Search Paralysis. TJSP is a more serious, difficult to treat form of JSF (Job Search Fatigue - can usually be eliminated with a pep talk and a trip to the mall). And I am living proof that it can potentially take over your life. Symptoms of TJSP include:

* Avoiding the Washington Post website.
* Surfing the internet in excess.
* Spending more than 20 hours improving your resume.
* Remaining with an abusive employer because you're too afraid to be unemployed again.
* Feeling extremely qualified to work in a field that doesn't interest you anymore.
* Watching news reports about the rising unemployment statistics, and asking yourself, "Why bother looking for a job when no one is hiring?"
* Attempting to sell things at yard sales and on Ebay.
* Juggling low skill, low pay, part time jobs.
* Losing track of what day of the week it is.
* Losing track of the date.
* Failing to reply to emails and phone calls from friends because you have no good news to share, and effectively cutting off networking ties in the process.
* Applying to graduate schools and collecting their rejection letters.
* Accepting a position with a previous employer located more than 150 miles from your house.
* Returning to the same job you had in high school.
* Realizing that arts organizations do not consider a bachelors in English literature to be a degree in the arts at all, even though you thought that writers were word-artists.
* Considering the advertisement for a "sandwich artist" position at Subway.
* Doing laundry or dishes, polishing furniture, trimming shrubs, and any other household chores that are out of character for you in order to seem busy.
* Watching an entire season of a tv show in a one day marathon.
* Punching Daniel Martinage in a face. Metaphorically, of course.
* Eating a pie.

But I had a moment of Zen last week when I was hunched over the sewing machine. On the whole the year of TJSP has been a remarkably uplifting experience for me. (In contrast I think that Cindy's TJSP was causing her major anxiety--Jessie kept telling me to email Cindy to get her to lighten up.) It strikes me that I have been living as though I have a terminal illness. I have never understood the point of a bucket list or a 100 things to do before you die list. If you need to make a list of tasks before giving yourself permission to live, then you are in serious trouble. Just live. LIVE! And it casts my TJSP symptoms in a whole new light. They become:

* Sipping my morning coffee.
* Embroidering drawings of commuters onto a t-shirt.
* Setting up an easel on the front porch and working furiously on a painting.
* Taking the dog for a walk and discovering my dream house several blocks away.
* Collecting the pale blue shards of a broken bird egg in the yard.
* Cutting flowers and arranging them in a jelly jar.
* Hand sewing my own version of a $600 skirt.
* Taking pictures of everything.
* Listening to the cassette tape of a garage band I've had since 1993.
* Parking the car next to the boardwalk in Solomons and watching the passing boats with all my windows down.
* Nagging myself that I am not painting enough.
* Throwing digestive caution to the wind and eating the entire container of blueberries.
* Reading short stories and poetry.
* Pulling weeds.
* Building a diorama.
* Dissecting an old green blazer.
* Driving Pam to the doctor's office and Walmart.
* Watching 5 mallards waddle across the street.
* Wondering if the distant rumbling is thunder or fighter jets.
* Watching sitcoms while knitting.
* Realizing that I must combine the two main characters of my novel into one person if I want her to be sympathetic and relatable.
* Taking a nap on the couch with the dog.
* Baking homemade bread, and noticing that the dough feels like my grandmother's upper arms.
* Making notes and sketches for a zine about creativity.

And unless I look at the checkbook, it's pretty okay to be living with TJSP. But I did look at the checkbook just now. All good things must come to an end. So I return to the first tally of TJSP symptoms, which collectively leave me frozen not wanting to apply for jobs because I know I will get offered a job that I don't want but will pressure myself to accept it out of fear that there will not be any other offers. It makes my stomach ache just thinking about it. Breathe. It gets harder to return to the Zen of it all. Why are none of the really satisfying activities also lucrative activities?