Tasmanian Devil Of The Recession

Getting squashed by the economy is not for the faint of heart. If you're quick to self pity, if you give up easily, if being forced to think creatively causes you to break out in hives....well, hopefully you had a mommy and daddy somewhere to move back in with early on in the game.

When I look back on the past two and a half years, I see myself as a whirling dervish. Constantly moving. Temping, "real" job searching, applying for food stamps, trying to fend off foreclosure for just a bit longer, putting out the fires that come along with life, regardless of the economy.

Just in the past couple of months, I've flailed from one thing to another - phone screens for jobs in two states, registering with the temp agencies, (once again), desperately looking for someone on Craigslist who will fix my air conditioning, (both car and home), when they both decide to bite it, within months of each other. And in the middle of all that, spending three weeks getting ready to appear on the OWN Network talk show. Quick 36 hour trip to Los Angeles, and right back to the merry go round that is my life, once again.

Me



Staying on top of economic crisis requires an immense amount of energy, something that depressed folk are not exactly known for having in abundance.

Back when I first found myself out of work, one of the first things that really hit me hard is that I was, for the first time in my adult life, overweight. I had somehow managed to put on approximately 35 extra lbs in the years leading up to the recession. A bad breakup in 2005 left me eating a ridiculous amount of chocolate ice cream and cake, late in the evening.

My once fiery metabolism had yielded to my mid 30's. I was no longer to process an enormous amount of empty calories and still effortlessly maintain a size 4/6 figure, with a modicum of exercise.

It would have been very easy to further drown myself in more self pity with even *more* garbage. But after bursting into tears in an Ann Taylor dressing room when a size 12 petite dress was too tight across the boobs, enough was enough. I decided I could be broke and out of work, or I could be fat, I wasn't going to be of all of them at once.

It took from around mid 2009 to mid 2010, but I managed to pull waaay back on the sugar, and ramped up the exercise again. It would have been nice to have had the benefit of a trainer or meal delivery service, but with no real income, I had to go without either weight loss luxury. I had started at a portly 164lbs, and ended up at 125lbs. (I'm 5'3", with an athletic frame).

While I was very excited to have lost the weight for all the usual vanity reasons, the unexpected benefit of that weight loss was that my energy levels went back up. The excess weight had crept up so slowly, it didn't even hit me how much it was pulling me down, literally. I knew I felt sluggish, but once I was back to 125, my knees stopped hurting all the time, I could get by with less sleep, and I even had more stamina for the job search.

And even in interviews, I didn't have to worry constantly that I looked like a stuffed sausage in my suits.

I don't think there is any magic recipe for keeping going when the going gets rough. But keeping your head above water, pretty much regardless of reasons for poor circumstances, requires energy. A *lot* of it.