The Catskill Chronicle

Dear Twice Divorced –

Well here we are at another holiday season, and I just can’t seem to shake the blues. I know you’ve covered this topic before but …

Boy oh boy, am I down this year. Been mostly unemployed an awfully long time, with no end in sight. And it seems to me that politics are just keeping things from getting better.

I live in a very depressed area, and what few jobs there are don’t even get advertised. My savings account keeps going down and down and down, and the freelance work, which is few and far between, doesn’t pay much, (and I usually have to wait and wait and wait to get paid.)

Just sitting here wishing that the holiday season would be over already. Of course that would just bring on the cold, endless days of January, February and March. Every New Year’s Eve I think “Well next year just has to be better.” But for a very, very long time, it hasn’t been.

Would appreciate any advice. Thanks.

Having a Blue Christmas

Dear Blue,

Last February I was told by my landlord that the apartment I was renting in their two-family house had to be vacated because they would be putting the house on the market. The following month I was laid off from my job. I do understand the situation you are in.

What I have done in the past with attacks of overwhelming doldrums is to maintain contact with family and friends who are not in the same frame of mind as I am. While they say that misery loves company, I find that to be true in very limited doses and for short periods of time.

There are those who recommend long walks and exercising to help improve your outlook, those options don’t work for me. I need to get out of my own head and out of my own way. I would sometimes devour books, 3 or 4 a week. What helped me the most was volunteering. Since I sew, I would make hats and scarves for one of the charitable organizations or help with the sorting at a food bank or charity store.

If you are constantly looking at the same four walls they must be closing in on you by now. Get out of the house. If you have a skill or talent try to figure out how that can be of use to others. Maybe you can help out at a local school tutoring or helping with craft projects or some production they are doing. Volunteer at a soup kitchen or some other place where you will have to present a more cheerful outlook, you will be surprised by how much that façade lightens your mood.

Hang in there, everything in life is cyclical, things have been better and have been worse and they will be both of these things again. It is how you handle it that makes all the difference in the world.

The pressure of the holidays will soon be at an end at which point you can at least move on to the next cycle without that weighing you down.

Be Well,