The Most Lovely Rut
I'm in a rut. I have been, on and off, for about 5 months now. I graduated from college exactly 6 months ago tomorrow. After graduation, I spent my first 2-3 free weeks just relaxing and settling in to my new life, since I had just spent 18 years straight in the education system (pre-K, K-12, 4 years college). I moved to Houston and settled all my stuff in with my boyfriend's stuff in his apartment. I went to go visit my family in San Antonio for a few days. Basically, I spent three weeks getting a handle on the transition out of college and then got burnt out on having nothing to do. Finally, my fourth week out, I started the job hunt. This marks the beginning of my first rut.
I spent weeks applying to jobs and the only word back would be a rejection. I was astonished. Previous to this my confidence was sky high. It had always been an breeze for me to get a job. I usually interviewed well, my resume and cover-letter generally got great responses when critiqued, and I finally have a legit education. I thought I would have been able to get a job easily, so it baffled me all the more as to what I could be doing wrong. I became very aware, very quickly that the current economic climate was not conducive for recent college graduates, like myself, to get a job or really start our lives in any stable way. In this particular situation, however, knowing what the problem is does not make it any less of a problem or any easier to deal with.
After this initial plummet in my confidence and confusion over the general direction my life was going, I became immensely depressed and really went through a big crisis. What am I doing? What do I want to do anymore? What should my next step be? How can I justify living with someone when I can no longer contribute financially? Was it a good idea to move to live with my boyfriend when I have no other connections here? These were all questions I just repeated to myself along with the misery of feeling like I completely lacked purpose or ability. Eventually I would try to force myself out of my funk, get re-inspired and apply for a ton more jobs and get shot down a ton more times - and the cycle would repeat itself.
I lose count of how many of these motivation-to-rut cycles I have gone through in the past six months. I got called for two interviews, neither of which developed into anything. I eventually applied to Target, Walgreens, Central Market, Whole Foods, and several other jobs that I am over-qualified for but would love to work just for the income - none of which I got much more than a rejection from. After completely settling and still being rejected, I spent most of September and half of October relatively solitary and inactive - I had basically given up. This was my longest post-graduation-depression/rut; it was significant, but would end soon.
After some personally significant life events occurred in October/November (family crisis, best friend's baby shower, other best friends' wedding, visiting with my college buddies for the first time in a while, and starting a gig tutoring my cousins), I felt like I needed to make some changes and get back on the horse. I have tried for the past month to regain my fervor, my motivation, and that confident initiative I had six months ago when I walked that stage and was so optimistic about how things would turn out for me. I feel like I am definitely still in a rut, depressed and having an identity crisis, but it's not as bad as the ruts before.
I'm not sure if I can get back all of that confidence and passion, or if I am just permanently jaded. At the very least, though, it feels like everyday I make a baby step towards being a normal person again, or I can kind of see the light at the end of the tunnel. For some reason, I don't know why (definitely not because 'people' say unemployment and the economy are looking up, because I sure don't see any evidence of that), I feel like my life is going to start again soon - it's surely feels like I haven't had a life of my own in quite a while. I don't know what I'm looking forward to - maybe at the very least just volunteering - but I know this is the best, or most inspiring, rut I've been in so far.
November 24th, 2009 - 21:29
yay!