What is This Feeling?

Yesterday was a holiday. And that meant absolutely nothing to me. Please don't interpret wrong: I am not racist. The civil rights movement was an excellent and necessary thing. Martin Luther King Jr. was a good man. But yesterday was another in a string of long days of perusing job listings, wondering which jobs I'm truly qualified for, attempting to calculate--in my head--the odds of actually receiving jobs I was looking at (truly not a good idea for a lit major, purely because I work with words and not numbers, thus the lit major), reading back issues of Writer's Digest. In addition, I spent at least an hour pondering what the highest possible score in Scrabble is. Astonishingly enough, this type of math doesn't faze me. Maybe because I'm applying it to words.

Anyway, yesterday I noticed a disturbing side effect of unemployment. Also probably a side effect of a recent breakup, though I hope not. But here it is: apathy. When my mom asks if I want to play Scrabble, I shrug. I don't care. When she further asked if I wanted to find a red pen and correct all of the egregious errors in the local newspaper (and I mean egregious--I will allow for a certain margin of error because even the Wall Street Journal and New York Times make minor mistakes), I shrug again. I don't care. I haven't actually picked up a newspaper in three weeks. (And three weeks ago was pre-breakup, so I suppose I can't blame too much on the breakup. However, the apathy notably increased this weekend, which was post-breakup.) I've watched an excessive amount of mind-numbing television. I find myself staring at nothing for hours. All because I can't motivate myself to get busy and do something. (Aside from the doing of applying for jobs, of course.)

And once I've finished this, I'll shower. I'll look for jobs. And then I'll read. I've been doing some of that. But I've even been feeling apathetic about that. How scary! Perhaps I'll exercise, because "exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people don't kill their husbands." Thank you, Reese Witherspoon. Hopefully happy people also find ways to overcome their apathy.