Siddity in the City

It’s 4:42 am. I’ve been awake since 8:30. In the morning. Yesterday.

It’s colder than a witch’s hoo-hah out here, so I’ve been holed up inside since Monday night, and I think I’m starting to crack, because I feel like I’ve spent, oh, 20 consecutive hours online looking at job listings in Chicago (nil-to-few, depending on the industry I check) and then peeking at apartment listings in New York, Boston, Philly and DC (not a damned one that I could afford alone in a moderately safe neighborhood on the sort of low-to-moderate white collar income I can expect).

I’m royally fucked, and I have no idea how to handle it. Sure, I’ve been unemployed or underemployed for extended stretches before–I came out of undergrad just as the consulting/dot-com bubbles burst, temped awhile, and waited two freaking years to go to grad school, so I’m no stranger to collections calls. It’s just…I had grown rather accustomed to being able to pay my bills every month without great difficulty. I had frankly clawed my wretched way out of the shitacular credit rating I’d dug myself into through degrees one and two, and was just beginning to enjoy the rewards of being a relatively stable, productive member of society.

I now have 9.5 weeks to return my moderately-skilled self to the ranks of the working not-quite-poor or watch aaaallllll of that hard work spiral down the proverbial toilet.

Ohgodohgodohgodohgod.

In other news, all this latent anxiety has led to a 4-lb weight loss in less than a week. It’s either the almost all-fruit/veg, I-can’t-be-bothered-to-cook-real-meals-for-myself diet, the caffeine fueled pacing, or the nervous potty time.

Oh god.

*weep*

In other news, my cat is thrilled to have his human home all the time to cater to his every hairy-knuckled demand.