Hope is a four letter word...

So I'm a lousy blogger....

If today is the first day of the rest of my life, I enter that life in a deluge of emotion. I am simultaneously angry, confused, scared and depressed. “Why?” one might ask. Perhaps a little history is warranted here.

In February of 2011, I was laid off from the best job anyone could hope for. It was a job which I loved. I loved what I did. I loved the challenges, I loved the work. I couldn't wait to get to work every morning. I had weekends that seemed too long to get back to that job. I was an Architectural Designer for an eclectic firm which allowed for all kinds of design.

The time between February 2011 and May 2011 was a difficult transition into unemployment. However, I found a job – in a city 260 miles away from home, well below my technical skill in drafting and well below the pay rate for that skill. It was a job – of which I did not enjoy. Indeed by the time I was again laid off in April of 2012 – I had learned to loath that particular organization and what it represented in my life. It was simply a place which I worked of which I had no positive emotional tie. Since then I have been chronically unemployed. I have searched long and hard, wide and far... and simply put, no one is building, meaning no one is in need of an Architectural Designer.

The last three months has been a roller coaster of sorts. I had a glimmer of light. This glimmer took shape as the possibility to be a set designer for a Major Motion Picture (that's right a movie). There has been several dates which it was promised that the investors of this movie would have their funds available to start this movie production. Each one of those dates failed, meaning that the movie was put on hold as to accommodate the moving of funds to the production. Yesterday, the final coming to Jesus moment came with the investors. They pulled out. The production as of now is shut down. I again am unemployed.

There is another little glimmer of hope, just enough to tease the thought that I might have a job with this production. There is another source of funding which our producer is chasing and is meeting with even as I write this blog. It's “The pitch” meeting to see if this investor is interested in the project. If he is, then several more meetings to get all the lawyers together and all the legalease contracts in place.

In the mean time, I get to float in limbo. It's been this roller coaster which I now find myself asking some poignant questions. Like:

“Why does life continue to kick me in the balls, just as soon as I start to stand up on my own two feet?” or “Why can't I get a single success in my life?”

I mean I feel like a perpetual failure, unable to provide for my family. Depression and mood swings are a constant companion, of which my family is tired. I was informed by my wife that this round of hopelessness she will not put up with “your pity party.” Well excuse the hell out of me. I can't control it. Every time I try, I get knocked back 5 yards, dog piled on, kicked several times in the groin, then stabbed in the kidneys with a shiv. Every time she tells me that I can't help but think that the world would have been much better off without me in it.

Here's the kicker... Since I am unemployed, I have no health insurance. So if it is a chemical imbalance which is acerbated by chronic unemployment, I can't do an damn thing about it. I can't afford to get medical help. Hell I can't even afford to go to the doctor to refill my medication for my asthma and or diabetes. So what to do?

Beats me. I have no idea. None. I have done all I my power to get employed and failed spectacularly. I can't even get a hamburger flipper job as I am constantly reminded that I am “over qualified” for the position which means, “we know you can do this job, but also know that you are gone the first time there's a better job for you, so we are not going to spend the money on you for your training since you will quit someday anyway.”

Even better is now Obamacare is enacted. A nice little side effect which is now plaguing the country is people are not hiring full time anymore. In fact, there are reports of certain jobs went form full time to part time to prevent the mandated health care law to provide health care for full time employees.

The more I think about this latest turn of events, the darker I feel. My wife is refusing to want to talk about it. Her only advise is to “just snap out of it.” If it was just that simple. It feels like a burden which pulls my shoulders down. I am disheartened. I just want to be numb, since that would be an improvement of what I feel now.

Anyone have some suggestions?