Have you noticed a pattern here lately?
1) I hardly ever write.
2) When I do it's disjointed, depressed, and basically devoid of anything interesting to say.
That's pretty much how I'm feeling these days. I have little to no energy, not much in the way of humor or enthusiasm, I can't get myself particularly interested in the process of writing, my creativity has pretty much deserted me...I'm basically in an incredibly deep rut. Very depressed. Even whining isn't any fun. It sure doesn't help any, in the sense of blowing off steam. So why am I even bothering with writing right now? I suppose just to indicate that I'm still alive, that I haven't, you know, dropped off the face of the earth.
I may as well have, though. Outside of my two families (mine and Cherie's) nobody seems to acknowledge my existence. The only people outside of relatives who call or write me seem to be people who want my (nonexistent) money. Beautiful. Makes me feel real important. When it comes to giving me a chance to earn some money with which to satisfy said leeches--ha ha, bam! No takers. Not even crummy minimum-wage type jobs want me. Graphic design jobs? Forget it. The most promising one so far, after many failed attempts to reach them by phone, emailed me to inform me that they hadn't made up their mind wanted to interview some more people, and that they'd keep me posted. That was a week ago. Most of the others didn't even write me back to even acknowledge that they got my worthless, talentless crap. A few emails back saying "thanks for applying, but you really should consider mopping floors for a career instead, drop dead, by the way are you Greek?" would have made me feel better by a hair.
It sounds, I'm sure, like I don't believe in my own work, that I have no confidence. You know something? I don't. My grab onto my own sense of self-worth has always been tenuous, and now I feel it's slipping away like a greased pole. I'm starting to get tired of telling myself that one of these days I'm going to be a respected and accomplished designer, or musician, or artist, or filmmaker, or anything. I don't know how to get there anymore. I'm tired of telling myself happy stories of what I could do, when I haven't done them already and nobody wants to give me the opportunity to go further. That's one thing I've noticed looking at job postings on Craigslist: every potential employer is looking for someone who's already got
very specific experience in whatever it is they do: "Ideal candidate has 3-5 years experience in designing excessive but eco-friendly packaging for small, expensive fashion accessories for the hip 18-29 year old demographic within a small design agency or in-house design department in the upscale-fashion-accessory industry, preferably one equipped with Macs and staffed by hip 18-29 year olds." Whatever happened to just plain designers? Or growing into a job? Maybe I'm already a relic, just like the CD and album covers that got me interested in design in the first place.
Right now, I almost don't care if I don't ever work in design again. I'd like to, but my main object right now is to get some goddamn job--any goddamn job--that'll pay me a few pennies just as a token gesture to say "hey, you may be just a peon to me, but you're worth enough for me to keep you alive." It'd be better if it paid me enough to pay the rent and car and put food on the table, but that'd be more than what I have now. I really truly feel worthless right now. I mean really.
