Mix of depression, anxiety, and frustration / anger

Hello, follower friend and any others who read this.

This is updating my "mini-depression" previous post.

It's more than that.

It's the PTSD anxiety about being trapped.

And, more than that, it is frustration that is becoming outright anger.

First? Just one Facebook friend or friend of friends has looked at my LinkedIn profile since I posted it a week ago. And that was my brother-in-law.

My sis has long offered to help, and a decade ago, when I felt more depressed than this and less inured to this level of depression, even came to visit me a few days. But, she has enough on her hands now, among other things, and I've learned to otherwise lower expectations.

This also confirms the limits of networking, IMO.

Since I've gotten into the newspaper biz, every job I've gotten has been primarily, if not entirely, my own effort. Two cases where I had some assistance, that assistance was in the form of pointing out an ad for the opening. The third? It was a friend of a friend, but that also includes a bait-and-switch from the allegedly available job to the actually offered one.

So, from what I see, networking is pretty much bullshit.

If you want to try to prove me wrong, don't "talk." Help me get a job better than what I have now.

Second, the person hired to be managing editor at my current newspaper is less skilled than me and less experienced than me. The only two reasons she likely was hired was being native to this city and, with freelance work running slim, she could be lowballed, if that happened.

Third? A good non-newspaper job for which I am skilled, a university position back where I lived before and missed its previous opening? Hasn't called back in eight days to talk about interview appointments. I assume, whether for ageism, non-locality, or whatever, it's going to screw me.

Fourth, and originally forgotten? The last couple of times I've dropped hints in Lifering's email lists ... nobody's picked up on them.

so

FUCK YOU WORLD!!!!!!!!

oh, and

BITE ME, WORLD

oh, and an hour later, another

FUCK YOU.

Mini-depression coming on?

I don't feel the same degree of anxiety as I did in 2007, but otherwise, feel kind of close to the point I was the last time I went on anti-depressants. And, I don't want to do that. I asked for an older one, a tricyclic, as well as an SSRI, having heard of brain zaps. Turned out that, in part probably due to not tapering enough, had more brain zaps from the old Elavil than from the Lexapro. (I was on a bigger dose of Lexapro, too.)

I've had a lot of work-related stressors in the last six months, even more than a decade ago. I've adjusted better so far, though not perfectly.
1. Laid off
2. Get new job but have to move for it
3. Company gets sold (good for getting health ins., not so good overall in other ways)
4. New editor as a result of that.

More later ... I want to hit the hay.

Good-bye to another sobriety friend

This is five seven sobriety friends or acquaintances I've had die in the last half-dozen years, now, with the passing of Dale Phelps.

And, no, AAer types, this isn't about the disease doing push-ups outside your door. That's a metaphor I reject, and besides ...

This is about sober friends and acquaintances who died that way.

Interestingly, I met none in real life.

Chani was more acquaintance than friend. Still never did hear definitely what killed her. She was about my age. Had some mental health issues, but seemed to be getting beyond them. But she passed in the middle of 2010.

Then came Kishi. I was likely her second-closest friend in Lifering. Though we never met in person, we talked a lot on the phone. A recurrence of her feminine cancer, combined with low reserves from a lifetime battling Crohn's, did it. She was my age, and died in the fall of 2012.

Ray? Ray Smith? Wow. A shining light in secular sobriety of many groups, as well as secular humanism in general. He died, also from cancer, just a little over a year after Kishi, early in 2014.

Then Manya, who surely was Kishi's closet Lifering friend, about a year after that.

And now, Dale.

And, I'd forgotten about two others.

Scott Larsen, with his diabetes catching up to him.

And, Mog — Michael O'Grady — to whom I was more intellectually attuned than any of the others.

Going full circle

I spent extended time at a university town yesterday — and not the first time I'd been to this particular place.

It's about 30-40 miles from where I lived 20 or more years ago, when I first moved to this part of the world, then started my first job in the newspaper business after moving in with my dad.

I'd been here before, when I'd lived up there.

I actually halfway remembered where the town square was. I'd gotten a university library card, while thinking the unversity library looked far different than it did decades ago.

Then, just off the square a block, I saw the city library.

And, THAT was it. Closed by this time on Saturday — a change from decades ago. But, otherwise unchanged, from what I could tell looking through the front door glass.

I still remember how interesting I found it back then that a small town in Texas, in its public library, had a copy of "The Humanist." Yes, being a university town helped, but still. (Since then, I've been in a university town where the town was still a town, not a city, but four times bigger, and the university 20 percent bigger, and the city library didn't have "The Humanist." That said, library funding cutbacks may be an issue in the Internet era.)

A bit of poignancy was in the air. Walking around the university grounds before that probably added to that. At the same time, the present day had me thinking beyond poignancy and deja vu. Something I looked up about my newly-current employer when I got home has me thinking more and more that my current position isn't the right one. One of those intuitive feelings. The question, of course, is how do I change that.

I actually got to thinking that, because there's not "that much" to the university town without the university, it wouldn't be a bad place to retire. Or, get a university PR job before that.

Stay tuned.

The emotions are enough that I think they contributed to a dream during my Sunday afternoon nap.

==

I may be checking in here more in weeks ahead. The stresses of moving, a new job, declining to move a second time to a second new job, while seeing this new job acquired (I think for the good, that's why I stayed) by another company is a fricking boatload of stress. And I face it in a small Religious Right-driven Texas Town.

Unemployed, re-employed, anxious, scared and more

So, since my previous post, I've been offered, and accepted, a new job.

Like a dog returning to its vomit, it's another newspaper job.

And, it's Tuesday-Saturday (for now) hours.

It keeps me employed, so no blank spots on the resume, and no need to have to face age discrimination issues. (As I have before ... albeit, in the newspaper industry.)

It's closer to Dallas, the closest thing to a home in the adult world for me.

And, I'm afraid again of getting trapped. I know the non-media world just doesn't get it when they see lots of movement on a resume. Fuckers.

In fact, I feel the trapped feeling now, as the first full week of work starts. I'll survive, yes. Probably a bit more anxiety-scarred.

And, with another scattershot resume entry that will look like a black mark to non-newspaper job offerers. Yes, I can try to spin "resilience" up somewhere in the objective area, or maybe in a cover letter. But ...

That likely won't help a lot.

And, knowing that won't help me a lot.

More later ...

The shithole of 2016

As noted in a previous post, I had my arm broken for me. (I didn't break it myself, did I?)

I have so far gotten back somewhere around 85-90 percent of normal function, albeit with a degree of stiffness at times.

And, on Dec. 30, I got fired / downsized / shitcanned / newspapersized from my now-former newspaper.

The last time I was unemployed, in 2009, it was for just over two months and the PTSD-related anxiety started chewing on me.

On the plus side, this time, was having even more money saved up toward the future, having more of an idea of networking, having more options for job searching, and being a bit less fearless / anti-selfish in creating alternate resumes and trying to get them to sparkle more.

On the minus side? Being in a small town well away from cities of real size. The PTSD again. Being of an age where in America, one is subject to age discrimination. (Seen it happen before.)

Well, I landed another job. Still in newspapers. Part of it sounds like a dog returning to its vomit. Part of me, though, knows it's "realistic," at least for today's America. That's even as one sobriety friend whom I friended on Facebook, and need to cut out of start seeing such posts, says people should start practicing more "acceptance" of such, not just psychologically but politically.

And, emotionally? Maybe it took this additional "break," pun intended, but ...

I finally cried tonight (other than for 30 seconds before calling my sis on that day) for the first time since I broke that arm, or rather, had it broken for me. It was while I was watching on You Tube a song excerpt from one of my favorite, poignant, musical movies of all time — "Sunrise, Sunset" from "Fiddler on the Roof."

I had said a while back to sobriety friends, and then social media friends, that I still felt like such a thing was coming on, and needed to be coming on.

It's 2 a.m., and time to wrap this one up, as poignant, introspective Rachmaninov now plays.

That was an interesting dream

President Obama was at some end-of-presidency event, maybe a post-presidential one. I was there with my dad, who eventually kissed him, not in a gay way, but a Middle Eastern greeting way. Then, my mom popped in the picture and I introduced her to Obama. (Both parents died before he became president, compounding the unreality.) Then my sis came in. Not sure at all where this dream sequence came from.

Deep thoughts, deep emotions

It's been more than four months since I've written here.

In large part, the second part of that has been unavoidable.

My arm was broken in a car wreck on June 10. I've been meaning to sit down here for a while, but, getting through doctor's visits, surgery to remove the pin from the outside bone, the ulna, continuing to work, including showing back up on the Monday morning after a Friday afternoon wreck — I'll talk more on that below — and other things have chewed deeply into my time.

And, that said, maybe I've been afraid to face myself here.

I've already been confronted with an aging, single secularist dependent on help from others, particularly from one coworker, the staff writer at my newspaper.

Beyond her help as a chauffeur and also an occasional emotional sounding board, I've simply ...

already been confronted with an aging, single secularist who is afraid he won't get back 100 percent of his arm and hand usage, along with ramped-up versions of old fears about being stuck in his current job and locale.

THAT's part of what I've been afraid to face.

Meanwhile, I have the job-related anxieties of a new publisher now here, having taken many weeks, and finally landing a sports writer (I think), and a bit of a small resentment over feeling underappreciated, and, beyond the local level, not enough concern expressed about how my broken arm was rehabbing and other things.

I've had some new rounds of quasi-deja vu that I'm going to get out of here. But, deja vu isn't a metaphysical fulcrum. Whether it's to consolidate memories, a brain with a mini-glitch in firing or what, it's not that. But, it is, perhaps, hope.

Unconscious sisterly motivations?

I'm starting a vacation at the end of this week ahead. On Saturday, I'll be in Phoenix, with sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephew.

I'm closest to them of any family, because of what she and I went through together, and because she pushes religion much less than most the rest.

That said, she wants me to stay over Sunday morning. To hear my niece sing. In church.

Sorry, but no. First, I think my niece has some musical talent, but, she's not budding potential opera star. And, if I stay that late, I miss half a day at Joshua Tree, and it's almost not worth it unless I spend another day there.

Plus, while she does restrain from pushing religion on me ... unconsciously, I think her worries about my soul, or whatever, are more than she might consciously recognize.

With our parents' deaths, I don't have to see my oldest brother any more. I also don't have to go to church at all for religious-connected reasons any more.

And, it's not big, but, yes, there's a small bit of resentmentness in the back of my head.

My family of origin steps up its hypocritical preaching at me

Old readers of this blog, or my posting on secular recovery websites know that I'm a PK, and that most my family of origin is in church work careers, or married to those who are, or both. And me? I'm the atheist black sheep of the family (with a graduate divinity degree myself).

Oldsters also know that I'm a "survivor." Within the family — an incest survivor.

==

Anyway, my aunt, my dad's sister (retired Lutheran parochial school teacher herself) has "preached" at me off and on over a decade, mainly via Christmas and Easter cards, as discussed here. Her daughter has done so off and on again on Facebook, and occasionally by email.

And now ... the younger of my two abuser brothers has started in. With the sidebar that he's still never admitted that. He has offered a backhanded apology in the past for not stopping my older brother. And now, he's offered a backhanded apology for anything else he might have done, while talking about Walt, my oldest brother, still as though he were the only abuser. He wrote me a six-page letter about this, in part a follow-up to him "outing" Walt to some family members last fall, as I discussed here.

That said, there was plenty of specific "other stuff" Tim has done even if he doesn't want to admit to that. Like getting me to steal from my sister's piggy bank. Teaching me how to shoplift. Introducing me to pot. Watching a friend of his give me white crosses. (Thank DOORKNOB I didn't get hooked on speed.)

I'm certainly not perfect. And I surely have bits of hypocrisy in my life. But not like that.

(My oldest brother, years ago, gave a backhanded admission of the abuse, but then said the fact that he was a minister was proof he was "beyond that now.")

Six page letter of preaching from Tim, the younger of the two. I have zero contact with Walt since both my parents' funerals. And, will certainly now lessen the degree of contact I have with Tim, too. I mean, I was so screwed up I used to think I had abused my sister!

Just needed to vent a bit, as part of a mental "fuck off" to him. And moving on.

If I am EVER that hypocritical, and you see me in person, please shoot me, have me arrested or something.

==

As for Tim, the younger brother? If he's seeking some sort of absolution, as I think he is after his wife's death last summer, I have none to give. With Walt, with no contact with him, there's no old sore getting picked at again. But with Tim, in that sense, it's worse. He's being some degree of hypocritical about our childhood even while preaching at me today.

Add in that I'm by far the most politically liberal member of our family too — including that all three brothers, especially first and third, skirt close to racial lines, or even push beyond that envelope at times, and I have little reason to want to talk to them for that reason.

All I want to do, as the brother who makes the least money of any in the family, and the one who had the most of childhood life and development stripped away from him, is survive a few more years. I want to survive a few more years fiscally, even as I work in a dying industry, to know that I'll have no problems getting to the Social Security finish line. After that, I know I can further detach from my family, because I won't even have any dire begging financial need at that point. Give me two and a half, maybe three more years.

I may finish venting by writing one of those "never to be sent" letters. Otherwise, for his consumption, I'm ignoring him now.