Depression Depression

Maybe it's cyclical Christmas blues, or maybe it's the impending economic Depression, but I've been depressed even more than usual the last 3 weeks or so. The Bay Area doesn't have very ambitious weather, and its idea of winter is rain, which I love, so it's not like that's to blame.

I'm going to go with the impending economic Depression theory. I've blogged a bit about the economy over at TFG, but it's getting to me enough that it's interfering with my real life, not just agitating my political braincells, and stepping all over the mental space needed for the things I'd normally write about here.

In fact I've been unable to write anything at all of much value since the week before Thanksgiving, which just makes me angrier. I find myself more worried than excited about anything and everything lately (even more so than usual).

Our house is now likely worth enough less than we paid for it that if we sold it we may not even be able to pay-off our mortgage and wind up making monthly payments on something we don't even own anymore. This means we're stuck here no matter what, for quite a long time.

None of the personal projects I'd hoped to get third party investment for are going to be looked at right now, either. Everything is our lives are in stasis as we slog through these wretched economic times (and meanwhile various CEO types are going around defending bonuses that vastly exceed all the money I've ever earned in my life).

They're even aggressively, preemptively cutting costs at work, something they've never done before. I'm lucky to have a job at all. But I don't want to feel that way. I want to feel excited about my work, and the economic situation is making that very difficult since I feel like there's a gun to my head to work or else (which makes it pretty hard to actually enjoy it).

All in all it's very unsettling to be so excessively -- settled. And yet, while a bad economy makes work start to feel more like a prison, at the same time it makes that security seem so precarious. It's a very aggravating contradiction to feel like the situation both traps you somewhere, and at the same time makes you feel like that place ejected you that you'd be totally lost.

Now I know why they call it a Depression.