By Robert Dean

For the Carter County Times

When the doctor told me my blood pressure was through the roof, I wasn’t shocked. My face had tinged recently, my head swam with fog, and I would break out with hot flashes daily. I knew something was wrong. Like, real wrong and I was just able to do something about it finally. I’ve dealt with anxiety my whole life, but it wasn’t till I was around thirty that I knew that what I went through daily had a name. 

I didn’t know this always-on fight-or-flight reaction was hard coded into my DNA. But over the last year and a half, my anxiety took a vicious hold of my nervous system, shaking the meat of my body away from the skeleton inside – that is when depression didn’t feel like beating me into my mattress. It wasn’t just my wiring but my situation: I was one of millions clawing my way out of the wreckage of COVID, still doing my best to find a job. Whatever the employment numbers were, they were inflated like a Macy’s Thanksgiving Float. Every day, I’d file countless applications, submit resumes, and hope. I had debt piling, money owed, and child support payments going from red to crimson. The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently slashed what they once considered a booming market by almost a million positions. Sounds sketchy, huh?

This news was quietly reported: The labor market added 178,000 monthly jobs instead of the 246,000 stated. I guess the labor market wasn’t as hot as previously thought. But I didn’t need the job numbers to tell me that; I lived it. You’ll see many qualified people living their worst financial nightmares on LinkedIn. What used to be a platform of milquetoast corporate glad-handing is now a graveyard of hope as people looking for jobs beg for leads, and recruiters do their best to explain why they pick the people they do. 

And when I kept telling people I couldn’t get hired, no one believed me. “It can’t be that hard to get a job. You’re not trying hard enough.” I had submitted over a thousand applications before I got my precious yes. So, as my life and belief in the job market devolved, did millions around me. Here’s the thing: we went to school and bought into the dream that we needed to go to college to get ahead. We played the game and ultimately are always punished for it when the economy takes a turn. 

Do I blame politics? Sure, it’s a factor. It’s always a factor. Some don’t like how they’re getting played; they take their toys and go home. We get left holding the bag. I blame empty promises based on hubris that by giving our blood, sweat, and tears to something, a group of investors will tear your heart out because it doesn’t jibe with the bottom line. From The Fed to the White House to Congress to the board room, the system isn’t working for us. I had to quit drinking, which was how I coped with the dumpster fire that was my life. I take daily walks to get my heart moving. And I find ways to destress. Every day, there is a new headline daring us not to believe the American system is collapsing, but ask all those job seekers if they’ve seen their doctors lately; I bet they don’t have insurance. I’m lucky I finally did.
Robert Dean is a journalist living in Austin, Texas. His work has been featured in MIC, Consequence of Sound, Houston Chronicle, and The Austin American Statesman, among other places. Grab his book of essays Existential Thirst Trap here.