Although my Mom's death does give us some "breathing room" financially (or will as soon as the life insurance payment gets processed), I still am having to deal with the "no job" concept, which is depressing. As I noted in my post last night, the sense of being an abysmal FAILURE is heavy on me these days, and that I'm failing my Mom, my family, and every dream that I might ever have had. Of course, this builds up into a cycle ... I get depressed about not being able to get anything going and that depression freezes me into inactivity, so nothing gets done. Things that should take me 15 minutes might take me 3 hours, just to "work up to" being able to open a checkbook or pick up the phone, or whatever.
Part of this was diven by The Wife's calculation that the cost of Daugther #1's summer camp came in about about 90% of her take-home pay. Since I don't have any pay to take home, this means that filling up #1's summer is taking all our income. Of course, The Wife is NOT the type to stay home and come up with activities for the kids, but at some point you think "what the hell?". Sure, we'll be living on that insurance for as long as it takes me to get a job, but it just sucks to have it drain away like that.
I was reflecting on what a hell I've been in the past four years. From the distribution nightmare with Eschaton in 2000/2001 to the debacle of the Sacred Sexuality Conference in 2001, to my not being able to find any PR work despite spending much of 2001 looking for same, plus the shock of 9/11 (yeah, I was one of those "middle class white guys" who felt particularly violated by the attacks, and spent nearly a month following glued to FoxNews for updated info), to "switching tactics" to look for I.T. training, and taking off all of 2002 to go back to school (expensive, stressful, and ultimately useless), then spending all of 2003 still unsuccessfully looking for work, and now 2004 which has been all loss and unwilling change. The only good thing of note in those four years was the birth of Daughter #2 in early 2000. I feel like I've been in a 10,000-round boxing match ... the pummelling just won't stop, and every time I catch my breath the bell rings again and I'm getting the shit beat out of me (on a emotional/psychological level at least) ... over and over and over and over and over.