Welcome to the World of Depression

That’s what my buddy Eric said to me tonight after I told him I was getting a library card. His rational was that someone with the desire to go out and get a library card while unemployed is likely to to be depressed and likely to have given up on looking again for work, and, most important of all, is looking for ways to kill time that don’t cost anything.* While I have not given up on looking for work I am aware of the fact that my job requirements (IT operations/management position in the federal government job sector in the NYC, BOS, or WDC areas) is making it harder for me to find a job than it otherwise would be without the employment or geographic restrictions I have put upon myself. Having said all that—that was quite the run-on sentence—I am expanding my job search to the state and municipal government job sectors and even to the private sector as well. I am still focusing on the NYC and WDC job markets with NYC being my first priority. But, if I can find even short-term work in DC, I will go back to DC until I can find something more permanent in the NYC, BOS, or greater New England area.

As for my library card, I went and picked it up tonight at my local branch of the county library and will have two books waiting for me tomorrow at another local branch of the library. My first two selections are the Hemingway and Vargas books from my Books I Want To Read list. I think I am going through a French, or at least a Paris, phase with these first two books. I already know I want to do a London series of books and got another addition to that category in my conversation with Eric. He recommended Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year so that will be read along with Orwell’s listing on my Books I Want To Read list (along with a LOT of Dickens) when I get immersed in my London series of books.

 

*It sounded a lot funnier—and made me laugh—when he said it on the phone.