I quit adding to this blog a week or two ago because I was sad. I guess it would be more accurate to say I quite because I was depressed. I was waking up in the morning thinking, “This is horrible.” I would then spend a couple of minutes pumping myself up, rationalizing, and generally smoothing things over. Then, I would get up and build a fire in the wood stove. Portland is already cold and I’ve been scavenging scrap wood and pallets to burn in the stove. Also I was flat broke.
I still am. Well, maybe not flat broke. My bank account looks more like a sloping rather than a flat line. A line sloping into debt.
So for the first week, I didn’t add to this blog because I was depressed. Last week I wasn’t writing here because I was on fire. Last week I was anxious all the time and I channeled that anxiety into productive activity. I couldn’t sit still so I ran. I scavenged wood. I applied for food stamps, then I applied for jobs. Every job I could find even the slightest pretense of qualification for in my resume, I applied for it. I applied to be a tow truck driver and I applied to be a security guard in the state mental hospital, but most of all I applied to be case managers and to work on crisis teams.
Yesterday I interviewed with a crisis team that works out of a homeless youth shelter and I did well in the interview. It was group interview – meaning all the candidates would interview at once. There were only two of us. I gave better answers to the questions we were asked. I clearly had more experience. When asked to describe a stressful experience at a former job the other candidate talked about working with an upset teen. I told a story about having a knife pulled on my by a psychotic client, then I told how I defused to situation. Then I told about how I continued to work with the client after he was discharged for the hospital.
I will be gainfully employed. I will be off food stamps. I haven’t thought about the cell phone all week.