End of my tether.

At least, that’s where I thought I was. I seem to be oscillating between moods, and I’m not sure how it happened. Missed one day of taking my meds (took it as soon as I remembered, the next morning), the season of jolliness is slowly winding down, and I’m coming to realize I’m entering a “now or never” situation. I don’t like who I am, most people online certainly don’t like who I am (quote: “Here’s an open secret, Slater: Nobody likes you”; some of the more prolific posters on a forum I’m on have me blocked, etc.), and often I just want to curl up and die.

And then I get a semi-jokey Christmas card from the ex-wife, giving me an utterly irrational glimmer of hope.

None of this is anything I really want. Time to fuck off and be bitter on my own.

Sick.

I’m getting sick of it all. No, not something as simplistic as ennui. I am sick of my own, ostensibly self-imposed limitations, of which I’ve consciously known about for the better part of two decades. Sick of where I am with my life. Sick of the voice inside my head saying, “If only you had listened to basically everyone giving you advice”.

It’s not that I can’t take advice. But I seem to be born with an innate fear of taking people’s advice, giving me an air of a know-it-all/know-it-better, which has lead to a lifetime of screw-ups.

Sometime next month, money and circumstances permitting, I shall try to go on something Ritalin-esque (only not that specific drug, because it’s apparently highly addictive, and thus, shit), and see if I can get a handle on what my psychotherapist calls “ADHD, inattentive type, without the hyperactivity part”.

I’ve spent a lifetime of being called lazy by everyone, from family, through educators, to superiors, and yet every test so far has resulted in a shocked, “Wait, you average 95%-100% on all these symptoms, and nobody’s told you that you have ADHD?!” response. And that response has come from anti-psychotropic mental health professionals who only suggest medication as a last resort.

Who knew I had a somewhat treatable disease?

I didn’t.

Employment in the USA

I have been unemployed for a bit over a month now, and the experience has been quite something. Money is running low, to the point where I have about a month’s worth of money left for rent, food and Internet. The last bit is kind of important, considering I’m a web developer and all that.

The process of unemployment money has been interesting, to say the least. Back in pinko commie Russia Switzerland, you’d get an average of 60-70% of your last income as unemployment money every month. Here, you get about 30%-40%, which for me currently works out at about $300 a week. My rent alone is $1,500. Hm. Added to that is the utter inefficiency of the unemployment system here, with odd letters appearing at random times, intelligible, ebonics-speaking phone operators, and a system that runs slower than a molasses glacier. If there’s one thing that the Swiss do well, it’s bureaucratic efficiency. Meeting at the unemployment office within the week with a qualified-for-your-field-of-work representative, planning, job search by said rep FOR YOU, etc. Downside is, you had to apply for 8-10 job applications per month, whereas here it’s two job applications per month. I suppose that’s the benefit of living and working in country with a completely blinkered economy.

If you’ve managed to score some job interviews, the next, completely bewildering step is: utter silence. If they don’t like you, and/or have given the job to someone else, they will rarely even respond with a “Thank you, but no thank you” e-mail. If they did like you, but decided to hire someone else? Utter silence.

So my suggestion to score a job in this, our shite US economy, is as follows:

• Research the company you’re applying for. This might sound like universal advice, but is especially important in the US, where companies might have a further reach than, say, a Swiss or other European company.
• Be pro-active at every step of the way. Next to researching the company, check out their employees on LinkedIn, Google the people you spoke with on the phone, see if there’s a Facebook group, find out if there’s any negative feedback on the company on consumer reports-style websites.
• Follow up even an initial e-mail reply with a thank-you note. You know full well the other applicants aren’t responding back. Same goes for post-interview: Reply to the principals who invited you with a glowing “Thank you for considering me, I had a great time during the interview, yadda yadda” missive.
• Always have questions ready to ask the interviewers. They always trot out the “So, any questions for us?” line, so be ready to pepper them even with hard questions, based on your above-mentioned research of the company and people. They appreciate someone who seems to know about the company and the difficulties it has faced.
• Remember that you’re probably being evaluated as soon as you set foot in the company’s offices, and even before that (e-mail etiquette). I interviewed for a position at the Apple Store (did I mention I’m running low on cash?), and after the initial chit-chat with the store reps in the lobby, the manager mentioned “Oh by the way, did you know you already started the evaluation process out in the lobby?”. Guess who didn’t get that job? Yeah.

Here’s hoping that those tips might be useful to you, fellow ex-patriate USA dweller. They might be somewhat universal, but I’ve found that such universal advice is particularly polarized in the US job market.

Lizards and gruel.

Me: my BLT didn’t have any bacon in it, only slices of ham.
Her: A BLT w/o bacon? Was it a diet version?
Me: It was a British version, imported from Switzerland. The french-speaking part, to make it all shee-shee.
Her: Too fancy. But you were feeling fancy today, and sometimes that is okay.
Me: Indeed. I laugh in the face of my dwindling bank account! caviar and champagne for the masses, and gruel for the aristocracy and lizard people!
Her: Hear hear!

You win some, and then you lose some.

I’m almost at the end of week two of my Zoloft course, and one of the best side-effects, at least in terms of both mental and physical health, has been that I have stopped being utterly depressed when I haven’t eaten enough. Used to be the case that if I missed one meal time by an hour or more, I’d be stuck in the doldrums (of course, eating something usually perked me up in 1 minute flat, but that doesn’t resonate when you’re as depressed as I was). I feel hungry now, but not depressed, and it is a very weird feeling indeed. Weight-wise, I’m down to 164 lbs., which is down from 166 lbs. yesterday, and down from a stubborn plateau of 170 lbs. a week or two ago.

No, I’m not going anorexic. But 170lbs on a 5.7-and-a-bit frame doesn’t look exactly sportly. More like “portly”, amirite guys? Guys…?

Better living through chemistry, part 2

Been on Zoloft for a week and a day, now, and I can honestly say that it has helped me. Especially in light of what’s been going on in my life. Being let go from my job, after having two panic attacks and generally feeling like I was going to lose it, is not something I had planned on.

So plan B has come into action: Get better mentally, get better physically, and above all else: Find a job that is a) challenging, and b) I can actually keep for longer than a year.

So lofty.

30 days of Zoloft, to see where that gets me. A better place, maybe. Jittery nervousness as a side-effect. But then again, “The Z”, as it is known among those in the know, also claims to help with social phobia. Ladies, here I come!

It’s also prescribed to counter-act breast tenderness. Fear my steel boobs.

Here’s a stealth bomber (it’s a metaphor!):

Fucked up dreams

2 days ago: Dreamt I was in a starting plane, which crashed into a block of flats before it could gain any significant ground. My last thought in that dream, strapped to the seat: “Finally some release from all this.”

Last night’s dream: Helping my ex-wife hook up with some Russian millionaire playboy, and having discussions with my Dad about how my parents almost broke up once, in 1984. Me: “Yes, I know. I remember”. And I do.

Type of look on my face waking up after those dreams: The “What the fuck?”.

How to get rid of “Just another WordPress site” in your site’s title

Because I keep forgetting where it is, here’s how to get rid of that annoying “Just another WordPress site” text in the site’s title. It’s the site’s tagline, and you can remove it thusly:

1) Log in to your WordPress dashboard
2) Click on “Settings” on the left-hand-side
3) Under “General Settings”, there’s a box labelled “Tagline”. Remove what’s in there, and a winner is you.

Better living through chemistry.

Like every good inhabitant of the USofA, I’ve been having some mental health issues lately. Nothing big, mainly just massive procrastination problems. Except that since I’m not 19 any more, I can’t just blow them off and worry about them at a later date, as later dates are becoming increasingly scarce. A counselor mentioned that I am potentially suffering from an undiagnosed case of ADD, and that something like Ritalin might be an option. I’m certainly not into popping pills at the drop of a hat, but at this point in my life, it sounded like a potential solution. Unfortunately, nobody wants to give me a drug prescription, as that requires a psychiatric evaluation. Which apparently costs  $1,300 around these parts. The alternative to a professional psychiatric evaluation is to go to a local University (George Mason University, in my case), and have my head poked at by students. That procedure is then billed on a sliding scale according to income level, but I’m dirt-poor and trying to save money.

Enter the good folks of the Something Awful Forums’ IRC channel, specifically the mental health channel. They suggested looking into something called “Bacopa”, an ingredient found in many over-the-counter “Super-Concentration 9000!!!” medications. Went to the local pharmacy at noon. Came home, took four as prescribed. Right now, it’s almost 3:30PM, and I have accomplished chores I would not have otherwise. But before you think I’ve turned into some kind of OCD button-polisher, I don’t think that’s the case. The only side-effect I’ve noticed is a very faint tingling of the skin, and I think I might just be able to live with that. The upside is a cleaned house, laundry being washed, dishwasher filled, and, most importantly, I’ve been plowing your mother through a “Dummies Guide”-style book on OS X development that I’ve been meaning to do for a very long time. Oh, and filling this blog with another article!

Moral of the story? If you’re dirt-poor, and have no clear way to get prescription drugs, try the non-prescription, over-the-counter route.

Beats trying to believe in homeopathy, for one.