There comes a time in the process where you become afraid of hope.

This is not good place to be in the fight against the depression, and I admit, I’m not sure how to battle it.  But let me explain it a bit more, since I’m living it today.

A recruiter calls, says, “I can have you working today or tomorrow, even.”  He describes the job, it’s one you can do, and you get excited. He negotiates with you about when you can do phone calls, if you’ll have time for ” a callback today.” You make the time, of course, you’re out of work. You Google the place you might work, you get directions on how to get there.  You contact the family and let them know things might change for the better. You tell you best friends.

Then, two days later with no call you sit alone at your desk and feel like shit.

And you feel like that bad feeling is in direct proportion to how excited you got, and you don’t want to get excited about anything, anymore. It’s hard to do your daily routine, it’s hard to do all the other things you need to take care of yourself. Your mind plays it’s soundtrack of all the other times people have talked to you and nothing came from it.  “If I’m so great,” the thinking goes. “Why does no one call me back?”

It’s that feeling of “they want me they really want me! no they hate me”.  You’ll get whiplash with changes like that.

And the rational part of me knows I was writing about this feeling two weeks ago. I know I need some patience, and with the direct hire positions, I have that.  But with the fast turn around stuff, when it doesn’t turn around fast, that’s hard.  I knew I’d have days like this, and I have my routine to keep me going.  Of course, in the excitement I’d let some of my routine go, after all I was going to be working again, soon. And that was part of the mistake.

I just don’t know if having real hope and getting excited is also a mistake.  How much is too much? If I get my hopes up too high, does it hurt more to have them dashed?  Or is it just that I was already stressed from two weeks without work that I’m feeling a bit fragile today?

How do you deal with this kind of thing?