Feeling rather hopeless
After many months of worrying about it, I'm reaching the point of despair. We're moving to Boston and our hopes of getting anything even close to a big enough rental house are miniscule. It's looking likely that much of our stuff will remain in storage for the next three years, and given the size place we're likely to be able to afford, I won't have the space to do any of my painting, so that stuff will all go into storage as well. This prospect depresses me greatly. I think that the surroundings in which you live affect your mood to a rather large extent, and being crowded into some shithole for three years is sure to do a number on mine. We had talked about buying a house, as the prices are low right now, but we can't do that. The rental market is obscenely inflated, so we're forced to rent, and will only be able to afford something extremely small and old and crappy. We currently have a 3 bedroom house (with a den and a rec room) FULL of stuff and that we're already going to have to get rid of a ton of things that we own just to fit into said shitty small house. Not that our stuff is great stuff, by any means... a lot of it is furniture we got for free or for really cheap at yard sales and stuff... but some of it I really like, like my dining room table, which we're leaving behind because it would take up too much space in the moving truck, and we probably won't have room for it wherever we move anyway.

Add to that my job prospects... the economy sucks right now and getting a job of any kind is difficult. I'd been assuming that I'd have to get a crappy job in food service or working as a receptionist/secretary/data entry/filing person/etc but Dan had been telling me that no, having a college degree meant that I'd have a lot better options. I had been skeptical, but had decided to look into it. I'd been looking into it and was horribly intimidated by everything I saw. I've pretty much accepted that my initial expectations are far more likely, especially given that in Boston in particular, with all of its art schools (largely the reason we are moving there--so that I could go to graduate school, which it's now become apparent that I can't do because we can't afford it), has a large population of people with art degrees who are far more qualified for the jobs I would want than I am. Also, given that I'm applying from out of state, and indeed won't be actually living in state until the end of August... (though for much of that time I'll be in New Hampshire, about 2-3 hours away)...well, my prospects for getting any kind of art-related job are just about zero.

As a last resort I posted about this on a message board, but that just made me more depressed and I gave up on it--to which the response was that oh at least I'd given it 2 hours of thought! HA! 2 hours. Try more like six months or a year! I've been fucking stressing over this shit for a very long time. Those idiots don't seem to understand that just because I only had a thread about it for 2 hours doesn't mean that that is all the thought I've put into it, or that they are the only people I've talked to about it. They also have no concept of the idea of "venting" whatsoever. I've decided that the self-important asshole factor on that board is too high for me to deal with right now. There are nice people there, but the assholes outnumber them and outshout them and invariably I end up feeling far worse than I started when I try to spend more than a few minutes there. It used to be a nice place, about 10 years ago. I set up an email filter to delete any mail coming from there, so that should help. Maybe once things have stabilized in my life I can go back and post to the threads about the TV shows I watch and stuff, but my desire to post anything substantial there has all but disappeared. They're like piranhas and they delight in belittling people and revel in hostility. (Again, not all of them, but those that are like that outweigh the nice folks just by their loudness.) Hell, they have an entire forum dedicated to flaming each other and being nasty.

Anyway, I feel like curling up in the corner and crying... which is pretty much what I did last night, and again when I woke up this morning. I imagine it's what I'll be doing daily. It doesn't help that I'm all by myself except for the cats.