The week was a busy one. I finally finished up in work and amid dumping my unused business cards and clearing my cluttered desktop, there was room for a few celebratory send-offs. The weekend saw Facebook overloaded with 'goodbye party' pictures, repetitious images of posing PR execs, comforting each other over cheap cocktails. Sad times for everyone as the reality finally hit home that things would never be the same again - for the four of us being let go and for those left behind. But I didn't have time to moan about missing my office buddies: I had to be grateful with the waitress job I had started a week earlier, grateful with minimum wage and whatever tips I could charm out of equally broke and recessed customers...I spent my days pacing the restaurant floor waiting to hear back from my interviews, determined my PR career would continue despite the current climate... I tried to shun all negative newspaper reports, switch off the television and turn down the radio. I tried hard to ignore the recession, an impossible task resulting instead with my boyfriend ignoring me.

"All you ever talk about is the recession,''he informed me, "give it a break.''

I knew he was right when I found myself texting a friend travelling abroad a summary of the catastrophic banking business. Another friend, a chef recently departed for New Zealand received a similar response when she emailed to ask how 'things were at home'? My reply was a list of restaurants that had closed or were in danger of closing. "Tesco is the best value on cleaning products,'' I told her in answer to how were things going living with my boyfriend.

I haven't heard back from her yet.

This has to stop I thought, as I diagnosed myself with 'recession obsession'. It's just like the 1980s again, I later conceded with an anxious pensioner at a bus stop, realising I didn't remember the '80s and my obsessing over the depressing economy really was out of hand.

My boyfriend has now imposed a limit - I have 10 minutes every evening to update him on the recession, what I read that day, which friends of friends' aunties' brother's girlfriend were the latest to lose their job, which shop is the latest to close.

I guess I better stick to his imposed sanction or my job might not be the only thing I could lose!

And then I would really have something to be depressed about!