Long term unemployment (and underemployment, too) is really hard. I’ve been there, and although I managed to keep those kinds of thoughts at bay, I know they can creep in the back door of your mind when you’re not feeling strong or optimistic. When you get down to it, most suicidal people don’t really want to die, they just want achievable alternatives to living with the pain what they are experiencing now and a sense that slogging onwards will eventually pay off somehow. My guess is that this is where you are. What kills is a sense of hopelessness combined with shame, more than anything else. Finding some way to reassure yourself that you don’t need to feel ashamed, and to provide hope or a reason to keep going, even if it means reframing how one looks at oneself and life and/or future, is the best chance for help here. Despite the puerile mocking of back office jobs that the BSD wannabes like to dish out on this site, there’s nothing shameful about being a developer. For one, it’s honest work, which is more than one can say about much finance work, it requires skill, and - compared to many alternatives - is not poorly paid. People that start businesses often have to follow what the market offers them… if people are willing to pay you for development, let them pay you for development. I like analysis myself, and I get to do some now and then, but people put me on writing tasks because that’s where the need is greatest and perhaps where my competitive advantage is.
So there’s no need to look at “development” as something beneath you. I know you want a finance job, but what you need now is just a source of income. And development work is better than a lot of work. You can keep networking and learning and writing. And most finance people dont’ end up as masters of the universe anyway - you just hear about them on television, so it’s easy to think that if you arent’ in finance right now, it means you’re giving away the opportunity to be the next Warren Buffet. Perhaps you are, but it’s very likely that even with a finance job, you’re not going to be the next Warren Buffet. Remember too, the times are cruel. I had a 55 year old friend get fired recently for apparently no reason at all. after 6 months of unemployment, she can no longer live in New York and is moving to Florida where her mother lives. She’s doing a good job of keeping a stiff upper lip, but it’s got to be hard for her. I was helping her apply for jobs and she just broke down crying, saying that becoming a lawyer was the worst decision she’d ever made in her life. These things happen out of the blue, and although one can probably identify some mistakes that any one of us made - who has never made a mistake in their life - the truth is that it can happen to the vast majority of us at almost any time. And despite what people on this board say, the majority of people don’t have years of fat bonuses to line a rainy-day fund.
So don’t let pride or shame keep you away from an income. You need to realize that there’s no reason to beat yourself up over a long unemployment stint, and there’s no reason to beat yourself up for not having a finance job. You need to find some friends and people who understand that, and finance people probably aren’t them.
Be open to the development positions. Keep pounding away at finance opportunities if you want them, but there’s nothing wrong with doing what you need to have an income.
In The Aeneid, Virgil wrote “Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit,” which translates roughly as “One day, perhaps, it will be pleasing to remember,” or - more colloquially - “one day, perhaps we shall look back on this and laugh.” Aeneas says this as his crew have just found themselves shipwrecked on the shores of Africa, and all of this, after seeing their families slaughtered when they lost the Trojan War. It’s one of the most beautiful lines in Latin, about overcoming when all seems lost. Aeneas ends up falling in love with Queen Dido in Carthage while in Africa, and then later heads off to Italy, where his family line supposedly leads to Julius Caesar and Augustus as well. (ADDED: http://classics.mit.edu/Virgil/aeneid.mb.txt : look for it on line #298 of the text doc, if you’re curious)
You’re not alone. Your emotional experience is more common than people like to admit, so don’t beat yourself up over it. Do what you do to make it to the next day, and tomorrow do what you need to make it do the day after that. Keep pushing, and someday, perhaps you will look back on this and see it as a time when you showed your strength.
And finally, make sure you don’t tie up too much of your sense of self worth in your job and your income. People who do this are largely miserable anyway. Exercise, good food, good friends, singing, dancing - all of these are ways to make life more appealing. Dont’ forget about them!