It ain't.

Joblessness is depressing. You can't pay rent and have to ask the landlord to put you on a payment plan. When it's your girlfriend's birthday, all you can afford is a card. And even the money for the card has to come from the change jar.

I spent my last money on a trip to Boston on Monday to meet with an IT recruiter. I knew she didn't have any jobs and that it was basically an informational interview, but I figured I could use a break from lying at home on the couch combing the Internet for jobs.

What I hadn't thought through was that the trip out there would cost me, and not just the four hours in the car. After all the tolls, gas and parking, the trip cost $90. On Sunday, I did some fluke freelance work before my bar-tending job and made $120 in three hours, the same money as three bar shifts. I was excited because I thought it meant I could pay my phone bill. Today my phone was shut off.

Having recently read Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman (recommended by my last therapist), I know that in order to save myself from the flat-spin of depression, I need to monitor my internal monologue . My explanatory style, says the book, determines how my circumstances effect my state of mind.

If I tell myself that I'm still unemployed because nobody wants me, or that I'm worthless because I'm broke, I'm going to start taking a whole lot of naps and getting into fights with strangers down in the town. The book calls those thoughts "permanent, personal and pervasive." Permanent because the attributes (e.g. "worthless") are not changeable, pervasive because the badness bleeds into other aspects of my life (e.g. 'broke = worthless'). Personal because I'm not recognizing other, external, circumstances that could cause my being unemployed (i.e. it's my fault).

Since finishing Learned Optimism, I have struggled to put the theory into practice. When my cat started sneezing, I imagined the other pets getting sick and the inevitable vet bills. When the recruiters didn't call me back or return my emails, I jumped to the conclusion that they were scam artists and that there are no jobs, only phony postings designed to harvest resumes and personal information. At least that's externalizing.

I'm hoping that the bank pays my bad rent check this month. If so, it will leave me $544 in the red, but at least rent will be paid. It will take me six weeks to make $544 at my bar-tending job. This is the kind of situation where credit cards are probably good to have. I can't get one though because my credit is so bad.

When my friends say they're broke, I get the feeling they mean they're cash-poor, but that they ultimately have savings, credit cards and/or relatives to fall back on. I have none of these. I already owe my best friend $1,500 since last year and my dad $500. I owe three years of back taxes to the IRS, $60,000 in student loans, and about $10,000 to a debt management company. My phone, gas and electric are frequently shut off. My girlfriend is sick of bailing me out and I don't blame her. In four months, she'll need to stop working to have the baby. Then it's all up to me.

And I wish my fucking eye would stop twitching.