Well, the circumstances are different for me. I've lost four jobs this year (laid off, goaded into quitting, quit because the money was no good, goaded into quitting again) and am feeling just about completely unemployable. I tried a couple of different SSRIs last year to try and deal with the periodic chronic depression I've felt since at least seventh grade. This weekend I sold enough of my stuff to have money to last through the month (barely), but have been so down that I haven't left my apartment to look for jobs, socialize, or even attend my ma classes.
I know that I have some talent and skills that could earn me some money, and make my life more rewarding but I lack the energy and motivation to use them. I want to return to art school in the spring, but I'm so much older than most university students (33) that I fear I'll be unable to make anything out of that - even if I do finish my degrees, who wants to hire a middle aged man who's right out of college and has a sh!tty work history? I haven't even had the gumption to paint all year, or to draw for weeks.
My lack of social contacts, confidence, and money has prevented me from having any romantic interests for years now, which is just another thing that keeps me depressed.
I should try something, and ginseng sounds as worthwhile as anything, but the thing about chronic depression and it's attendant withdrawal from the world is that it takes some serious change to break you out of it. I only leave the house at night, so I can avoid contact with humanity. This board and a couple of others are the closest thing I have to a circle of friends right now, and of course my contact in cyberspace is as distant as it can be while still counting as contact.
Anyway, there you have it: Chang Style Novice's f#cked up life and mind.
All my fight strategy is based on deliberately injuring my opponents. -
Crippled Avenger
"It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever get near a front-line trench, except on the briefest of propoganda visits...Perhaps when the next great war comes we may see that sight unprecendented in all history, a jingo with a bullet-hole in him."
First you get good, then you get fast, then you get good and fast.