adrian_turtle (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
adrian_turtle) wrote2007-08-27 10:40 pm
adrian_turtle) wrote2007-08-27 10:40 pm
critical failures of initiative
I've been having a lot of trouble with depression this summer. Some of it is random crying fits, but most of it is the kind of depression where I just get stuck. I can recognize what needs to be done, I just feel too hopeless or uncertain to take effective action. Sometimes this means not applying for jobs. Sometimes it means not posting to LJ or sending email to friends. Being so stuck has really slowed down the process of trying to treat depression--it's not that I was doing something more important than calling the doctor to make an appointment, or calling the psychiatrist to say "this isn't working, it's time to try something else." It's just that none of those things were getting done, while I sat here like a lump and stared at the wall a lot.
Anyhow, I started a new medication a few days ago, and it seems to to be helping a little. Things that used to be impossibly difficult are now just very, very, difficult. Job hunting. Writing to extended family. Dealing with mending. I revised my resume to try to look more like a technician with transferrable skills. I don't have the creativity and initiative to work as an independent researcher, even if I had experience in a live industry. It scares me to see how people have to deal with job conditions that would break me in short order. I mean, more broken than I already am. http://therck.livejournal.com/165194.html http://callunav.livejournal.com/750562.html
I found a couple of job descriptions on Craigslist that looked promising; a temp job, and a permanent position in the same company. (In Cambridge. On the *T*.) I downloaded the descriptions, and took my laptop off to where I could work in air conditioning. Then I spent the afternoon working on cover letters for those two jobs. I could tell that a confident, efficient, writer could have dashed them off much faster. I could almost remember *being* a confident, efficient, writer. But now it took me almost 6 hours of fretful, grinding, miserable, work.
Monday morning, I went to actually apply for the jobs, and discovered both had to be done via webform, with no way to enclose a cover letter. 4 hours later, they sent me 2 identical rejection slips. "Thank you for your interest and we wish you the best of luck in your job search. Please do not reply to this email." My confidence was not ready for that.
Anyhow, I started a new medication a few days ago, and it seems to to be helping a little. Things that used to be impossibly difficult are now just very, very, difficult. Job hunting. Writing to extended family. Dealing with mending. I revised my resume to try to look more like a technician with transferrable skills. I don't have the creativity and initiative to work as an independent researcher, even if I had experience in a live industry. It scares me to see how people have to deal with job conditions that would break me in short order. I mean, more broken than I already am. http://therck.livejournal.com/165194.html http://callunav.livejournal.com/750562.html
I found a couple of job descriptions on Craigslist that looked promising; a temp job, and a permanent position in the same company. (In Cambridge. On the *T*.) I downloaded the descriptions, and took my laptop off to where I could work in air conditioning. Then I spent the afternoon working on cover letters for those two jobs. I could tell that a confident, efficient, writer could have dashed them off much faster. I could almost remember *being* a confident, efficient, writer. But now it took me almost 6 hours of fretful, grinding, miserable, work.
Monday morning, I went to actually apply for the jobs, and discovered both had to be done via webform, with no way to enclose a cover letter. 4 hours later, they sent me 2 identical rejection slips. "Thank you for your interest and we wish you the best of luck in your job search. Please do not reply to this email." My confidence was not ready for that.