The Choice is Yours.

When you lose your job, you're suddenly faced with a lot of choices. Some are bigger, more existential ones, such as "Why am I here?" "What should I do with my life?" "What's the greater lesson in all of this?"

Those are a few that I try not to ask myself too often- but in the dark, as I try to shuttle off to dreamland, there they are--hiding in my bed and farting under the covers. They were there before I lost my job, when I was working and feeling unfulfilled, struggling with tough bosses or stressful deadlines or writer's block or difficult clients-- or all of those things at once.

The questions that really get to me though, are the ones I never used to have to ask myself.

"If I save all of my money for the next two weeks, skip lunch every other day and clip coupons, should I use that money I can scrimp together to get myself a manicure OR a pedicure?"

"This Christmas, should I buy a Christmas tree, or should I save that money so that I can afford to buy gifts and put them where the tree would normally be?"

"Should I go to the doctor, or hope this sickness works itself out?"

"Can I afford a Metrocard this week, or should I just risk arrest and go under the turnstyle?"

Not exactly "Sophie's Choice," true. But the things I never had to wonder before, the choices I never had to make- that's what trips me up. I have to stop and think now about things that used to be automatic, no-brainer responses to simple, everyday conundrums. The more simple they were before, the more heartbreaking they are now.

Do I sound spoiled? That I get weepy over the fact that I can't afford a $17 (plus tip!) mani/pedi combo? Maybe. But as the holidays approach, the choices I have to make become more and more glaring. My family has agreed to not exchange gifts, but of course we'll buy for my niece and nephew. I scour the catalogs and find the perfect items for each of them-- for my musically gifted nephew James, I consider an instrument that I know he'll love. But I can't afford it. And so I just think about how much I want to give it to him, and I get a little sadder.

I've been through this before, of course. Not the last time I was unemployed, in 2001- when I was still waving around my various credit cards like they were the American flag. I went through it when I paid off my debt- when I made homemade gifts for my family, when I shopped sales and saved money and did everything I could to not let my financial dire straights and my $700 a month debt payment bring me down. There were lessons there, for sure. I got myself in that mess, I got myself out. But this time I did everything I was supposed to do. I worked hard. I stayed late. I did my best. And I lost my job anyway. My financial insecurity isn't because I overspent- it's because this is just the way the world is right now.

It's easy to feel resentful. Not towards you,the employed- because you can get a mani/pedi and hey, get your eyebrows waxed while you're at it. But at me: because I didn't save as much as I wanted when I was working, because I took my employment for granted, because I used to be able to not have to think about these things. And because I took that for granted.

As they say, resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for someone else to die. It gets me nowhere to be angry at myself. This isn't my fault, and I am doing the best I can. I once read that life is 10% what happens to us, and 90% how we react to it.

So now I have a new choice to make. Do I get down, do I allow self-pity to run riot through my apartment? Do I get under the blankets with the farty air and feel sad that there are no jobs, that rejection letters fly like confetti into my mailbox?

Or do I just tuck and roll? Muscle through this holiday season and know that this too shall pass, and that one day in the hopefully not-so-distant future, I'll get to look back on Christmas of 2009 and say, you know what, that was a tough one. Not as tough as 2007, not as easy as 2006. It was hard, but I got through it. Not because of what was happening, but because of how I reacted to it: with a positive attitude. With faith that things would turn around. With dignity, with grace, and with hope. That's the choice I want to make today. To live in the positive. To live in hope.

Happy holidays, everyone. I hope that they are merry and bright for you- no matter what you get-- or don't get.

Hope Springs Eternal

Now is the winter of our discontent. It seems to have come early this year, no?

Actually, that's not a correct usage at all. What Shakespeare meant when he wrote that in Richard III was not that it was winter and we were bummed, suffering under the blue cloud of our collective seasonal affective disorder-- but rather that our sadness was ending. Winter is the time when things die-- in this case discontentment-- and spring brings renewal. Hope. Of course what I mean is that a.) it's unseasonably freaking cold for October and b.) the cold gloominess suits my mood and c.) we never had a damn summer, we had monsoon season, so of course I am discontented.

Ah, hope. It's been a catchy theme this year, hasn't it? Barack Obama showed up with a bucket load of it when we were all drowning in such despair that the only choice that seemed at all reasonable was to hitch our wagons to his rousing optimism. And trust me-- I am an optimist. I really believe I have to be, because I am capable of such immense disappointment that clearly I must be hopeful in order to get so shockingly let down time and time again. I've made an art form out of getting my hopes up, then dashed. Our president talked about the "audacity of hope." I hear that, for sure. Andy Dufresne called it "the best of things."


Lately I've come to think that hope is a bitch.

It's like a drug that we're addicted to- the more desperate we get, the more we hope. Think about the hope a gambling addict puts into their lives-- just one big win can solve all their problems. They'll even bet the mortgage on it. Think about the heroin addict or alcoholic who, having tasted that high once, chases after it repeatedly hoping in vain to get that same feeling again, no matter what damage it brings to them.

So it is with Americans these days. Nearly as soon as this recession started, people were predicting the end of it. "We're pulling out of the economic downslide!" The spin doctors insisted hopefully as families lost their homes and retirees found out they had to work until the day they died. If they could find a job, that is. "Job losses are down!" They cried. Well, frankly that's what happens when there's no one else left to lay off. Everyone reading this knows at least one person-- besides me-- who has lost their job, I am sure of it. I dare you to tell them that unemployment is down.

In a way, the false reports of an economic recovery were strategy. The government needed us to believe that things were better in order to get us to stop holding on to every penny and go shopping, dammit. Because we were all saving our money, we were crippling the economy, and they needed us to start spending again to get things moving-- as if going to the mall was like fiscal Metamucil. It's sort of how the Gap uses "vanity sizing," which means they put a size 10 label on size 12 pants, so that you feel skinnier and better about yourself and then boom-- only shop at the Gap. The economy needs us to feel skinny in order to thrive.

They need us to kid ourselves. Because there is no room for realism in optimism.

Just last week, my former employer Conde Nast closed three magazines-- Gourmet, Cookie and Modern Bride. But wait-- analysts tell me the bloodletting is over! Didn't anyone tell SI Newhouse? And after you talk to SI, maybe mention it to my Facebook page, where a number of unemployed friends have turned status updates into a virtual soup line. "Anyone need a freelance writer? Will work for Tasti-D-Lite," read one recent posting. Okay, that was mine, and I would work for ice cream. But the sentiment is there-- it's still ugly in the job market, and there's blood all over the newsfeed.

So here we are, winter once again. Just when we didn't need it most.

I respect Barack, and I voted for him (well, I thought I did, then later found out that the Board of Elections made an error and my vote didn't count! Boo!), but it's getting hard to hold out hope. With each job I go out for, with each dollar I work harder to hold on to I get a little more desperate. I had been hoping this would all work itself out. Look at where that got me.

In reality, it's not hope that will fix things, it's time. In time, this will pass. In time, America will be thriving again. Someday, I hope soon, I'll have a fulfilling job that I love. Maybe it's the optimist in me, or maybe it's the realist, or maybe I'm becoming a pessimist just enough to make me optimistic, because I don't think things can get much worse. Maybe I've been listening to too much Howard Jones lately, but I kind of feel like... well, things can only get better.

No money, no job, and no idea where my life will be six months from now-- it seems like hope is all I've got. Now let's hope it's enough.