The Blues

The sky today is mezmerizingly blue with high, silken clouds slightly cooling the furious summer sun.  Two of the dogs who live here are looking around, as if captivated by the rising, falling trill of cicada, the occasional whistling chirrup of sparrow or robin or cardinal. It is the kind of summer day in midwest Ohio when it's difficult to believe that anything ever could be wrong.

But.

Yet.

Still.

I'm trying to wrench my psyche out of the molasses-like state most commonly referred to as "depression." I'm  arguing with myself, with the accumulation of "things to do" that aren't getting done. I'm fighting to ignore the gravitational pull of sleep, the murmuring assurances that a long nap, one speckled with dreams, one in which two or three 20-dollar bills fall from the pages of a long unread book, one in which the seemingly serrated edge of this life lived might be dulled, just a little.

It's tough to say, though, who, precisely, is winning that fight. From my perspective, it's a bit of a "zero-sum" game with emphasis on the "zero" and the gaping lack that empty value entails.  You see, we're broke again.
Flat broke.  Even though I'm working across the summer in moderate ways, our income is now defined in opposition to possession, and money, once again, is everything. Ironically, I am working. The money simply isn't enough to cover bills that were incurred in a different marketplace, to save a single penny, or to look forward beyond a few days.

When I started this, I can't have imagined that I would still be thinking about the economic crisis. I couldn't have believed that the housing market would still resemble a 1950s-era joke about marriage.  Take my house . . . please. I  And I certainly couldn't have entertained the notion that my wife, educated at a prestigious private university would still be unemployed--more than two years later--or that her unemployment benefits would have run out entirely.

I want, desperately, to take a nap and forget for a long while. I'd like to pretend that I could sell my house, which we bought in '05 for, say, a 5% gain over the course of six years. Or even a 1% gain. I'd like to think about other things like the light breeze pushing a child's empty swing in a neighbor's yard, a trip to somewhere heavenly like Taco Bell, the slow unfolding of a baseball game on television, or the tidy rhythms of a re-run sitcom. I'd like, in short, to be someone else, somewhere else, sometime else.

How then could I not be depressed?  Even on a day like this when robins chirp loudly enough to drown the sounds of cars and planes passing nearby for destinations I may never know? And perhaps more pressingly, how is my wife surviving this?

The point here is twofold: First, only the particulars of our story are unique. With an unemployment rate of 9.2%, there are likely millions of people in similar situations. Second, the psychology of poverty is brutal.  Whereas we tend to think of "depression" as an individual phenomena, a marker of bad brain chemistry, bad luck, or bad decision making, the fact remains that systemic forces (like the worth of our house) are contributing, and frequently, defining characteristics of such psychology. And in a while, I'll  tell you a narrative  (or two) to drive this point home as violently as I can.

For now, I need to go sell something for considerably less than its worth.  
       

Tomorrow

At the risk of meandering into a land bristling with cliche, unemployment, in oh so many was is the sort of setback that can only be overcome with luck or--as it must be for most of us these days--a near avalanche of Annie-like optimism.

Of course, even though someone who is unemployed may frequently feel as if they're being treated like a child, I'm no orphan. Still, think about it: "It's a hard-knock life / for us..." speaks to me in ways it hasn't previously, and more, I'm reminded that (oddly) one of my favorite songs originated in what may very well be the most saccharine narrative of the American Dream ever told.

More, think about "Tomorrow". Is it only a day away or always a day away? Regardless, for the roughly ten percent of Americans who are out of work, that tomorrow must be the first thing we think about in the morning and the last thought that flits across our minds before the oh-so-welcome respite of sleep.

Oh where, oh where is my Daddy Warbucks? Or my FDR? (It's ok; you can laugh).

So how the ______ does one maintain that optimism? Particularly, if like me, you have a more critical slant of mind?

There are myriad answers to those questions, ranging from you don't to it's my nature to look on the bright side of the half-full glass.

For me, I've spent the last week or so working on my own personal website, making vaguely elaborate plans to launch (or is it relaunch?) a more profitable freelance writing career. More, I've been to the library and checked out the sorts of job hunting and career advice books I'd likely shun if the economy were better. I've even contemplated the counterintuitive strategy of applying for jobs as a car salesman. And, more frequently, I take naps.

There is, of course, a horrible sense of irony if you consider the number of people who, suddenly, seem to have time. Time, that most precious of commodities, is the one thing many of us now seem to have in abundance. But how do we use it? How can we, most effectively, enjoy those afternoons when most of the world is at work?

Can we?

The answer, I suppose, depends upon the health of your savings, your credit lines, your chosen (or stumbled upon) career. The answer, I suppose, depends upon how you see your prospects for your own future and how quickly you can erase (or learn from) the application denied or the application with no response. The answer, I suppose, is psychological. For each of the 13.7 million people (as of April) who are unemployed in the United States alone, the shape of that time must differ in subtle ways.

Yet, all of us in that unfortunate category must somehow and someway maintain our own faith in ourselves. We must, if need be, invent it from nothing and praise the small gifts--like the budding blooms of peonies near a cracked sidewalk or the laughter of a child walking home from school down those same sidewalks or the smallest note of encouragement from someone we love--lest we risk losing our ability to imagine that tomorrow.