Job Search Depression Is A Monster. Don’t Let It Beat You.
I’m in month eight of my job search since graduating from my master’s program last summer. Every day it’s getting harder to stay positive and motivated. It’s even more difficult when my family has issues of their own and can’t provide me with the complete support I need, just like I am not able to help them at the moment.
Getting overwhelmed by my depression, I posted on Facebook venting about this newfound stress, and old and new connections reached out to me soon after. Not only did they give me compassionate support, they gave me advice that helped me stay anchored in the self-confidence required for this job search. Here are these useful tips:
- Remember that you’re not alone.
Before this current job search, it was easy for me to see updates about a wedding, a new baby, or a new job on social media as a “grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side” kind of situation, leading to envy. Now, I congratulate my friends every time I see those updates. Those posts are reminders that they have overcome similar obstacles as the ones I have faced, and they have been on the same boat as me at one point. Inspired by their accomplishments, I am pushing myself to overcome this job search soon as well…hopefully soon.
2. Talk to a friend regularly — every day if you have to.
Recently, a fellow grad school alumna I reached out to told me that one way she coped with job search stress was to chat with a friend every day. I knew that having a support network was powerful before, but I never felt the full impacts of it until I posted my Facebook post. Many friends offered time for a phone or video call for a check-in and asked if there was anything they could do to help. Some even went further and took me out for a meal, gave me some money as a gift, or let me stay over to hang out with them — anything to distract me from my current worries. Of course, they couldn’t provide everything I needed (that would be too much to ask), but the little things were enough to keep me going.
3. Keep yourself busy.
Some friends told me that I was actually lucky to not be working right now because I have all the time in the world to pursue hobbies, travel, and just do stuff that I like. Easier said than done when you don’t have to worry about paying bills or getting food, right? Right. But they’re right as well.
For hobbies, I can always stream video games and other content on Twitch as a stress reliever. It earns some income anyways, even though it is not much. Then there’s also this blog where I can practice writing about the things I love and hopefully become a more effective communicator in the process.
Right now, most of my free time is devoted to online classes for improving my data analysis skills. I am currently taking the Google Data Analytics Certificate program and the Python for Everyone specialization from the University of Michigan on Coursera. So far, not only am I enjoying the classes, but they introduced me to resources and data science communities that I wasn’t aware of outside of grad school. (I didn’t even know Kaggle and data science competitions existed until recently!) #TidyTuesday has kept me busy every week with a dataset to visualize and an opportunity to practice my coding.
But at the same time, it’s still easy for me to lie down on my bed and ignore the world to push my worries away. I know persistence is the key to surviving a job search, but there’s no point in sugarcoating the pain. It’s understandable.
4. Remember that YOU’RE WORTH IT.
Pictures, or in this case, GIFs, are worth a thousand words, so I’ll just post this lovely GIF a friend shared with me. Who doesn’t love a cute bird after all?
5. Take care of yourself.
I struggle with this the most. I have had physical health issues throughout my entire life, and my mental health struggles have persisted since I graduated with my bachelor’s degree many years ago. In the past four years, I’ve met with therapists who taught me coping mechanisms for my anxiety (or in this case, depression). I know I have the tools to overcome my job search worries, but the depression has been too strong recently. I even struggled with brushing my teeth or taking a shower daily at one point. My mom noticed these struggles and my crying almost every day, so even with her personal worries, my mom did what any mom would do and kept providing me food and other things, even though I didn’t ask for help. I was grateful to her for that, because I could tell that my depression was not letting me eat as much as usual.
I’m sure there are more job search tips out there, but those are the top five that are noticeably present in my head right now. I wrote this as a reminder for myself to stay motivated, but if you are also job searching and you find help from this blog post, I’m glad I can be of some help. Good luck on your job search, too, and may we all find a way to get out of this void.
