Category Archives: Work

Feeling Appreciated At Work (or Sometimes An Email From My Boss Is All Good News)

Posted on September 28, 2021 | Comments Off on Feeling Appreciated At Work (or Sometimes An Email From My Boss Is All Good News)

In some ways, I’m close to what my day job life was like from before the pandemic. In many other ways, things are still so different from before. Different isn’t always bad and in fact, I think many of the differences from before are positive. While I am working significantly more hours than I was working before, I’m also making more money which is nice. And I am doing different things now that challenge me and make me have to think of new solutions. It was nice to have very little work and a lot of free time between clients, it is also nice to not have as much boredom during work as I did before.

It’s not just my jobs, hours, and responsibilities that are different from before. Since I started back at my box office job, my pay has been different too. I knew that I was going to have to make less money when I was asked back because things were slowly coming back. But since I was working my other jobs (and getting raises at those), I wasn’t too bothered. I knew I was being underpaid, but having my job back and knowing that it would get better soon helped. And it took a while before I finally got a raise that got me close to what my old pay rate was. But a raise is a raise and I was very grateful for that. It wasn’t that long ago that it happened, so I figured that might be it for a while. But then I got an email from my boss the other day and I was nervous to open it when I saw it in my inbox.

Fortunately, the email was only good news and let me know that I was going to be getting another raise starting this week! And this raise is going to bring my pay rate above what I was making before the pandemic! I am still working less than half the hours I used to work (that is my choice based on my hours with other jobs), so from that job alone I’m not back to my pre-pandemic income. But I’m not relying on that income as much as I used to. It’s only a portion of what I make each month, not a majority of it. And every extra money that I can make is helpful, even if it’s not a huge change in my weekly pay.

I’m seriously so grateful for this raise. My box office job can sometimes feel like my work isn’t fully appreciated because we only send messages out and don’t get a lot of feedback. But the raise is proof that they see my work as valuable and helpful to the company. And I feel like it’s a sign that they understand how hard we do work and how much we do have to juggle, especially considering that we cover over 70 different locations and they all have their own details to answer.

I’m not expecting a raise for any of my jobs any time soon. I’ve gotten a lot of pay or hour increases recently and there isn’t much more I can except for now. But hopefully sometime in 2022, I’ll have another raise or two in at least one of my jobs. Even though I’m making much more than I did before, I’m still not making a lot of money considering how many hours I work. But I do know that I’m doing better than a lot of people and I’ve been lucky even with losing work during the pandemic. So I’m always grateful for my work and for making the money I can.

There have been a lot of surprises the past year and a half with my day job situation, but getting an unexpected raise is definitely one of the best ones and it made my week last week!

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Default ThumbnailWork Begets Work (Old Bosses Possible New Jobs) Default ThumbnailPositive Thinking And Putting It Out There Worked (or Working For Another Old Boss) Default ThumbnailDay Job News (or Things Are Getting Better) Default ThumbnailOn Hold With Work For Now (or It’s Now A Waiting Game) Default ThumbnailFinally Back To A Full Work Schedule (or I Really Do Like Having A Stable Schedule) Default ThumbnailUnderemployment Is Frustrating (or Trying To Find The Balance Of Flexibility And Work Hours)

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Still Figuring Out Time Management (or Little Changes Do Make Big Differences)

Posted on September 17, 2021 | Comments Off on Still Figuring Out Time Management (or Little Changes Do Make Big Differences)

When I started working full-time at my customer service job, I didn’t think it would feel that different from how my hours felt before. Before I was working full-time, I was working the mornings at that job and the afternoon at my box office job. So I was working from 9-3 every day between the two jobs before taking on the full-time hours and I knew that was close to what my schedule would be like. I would only have 2 hours more each day and that didn’t seem like a lot.

From the start of working the new hours, it really did feel like I was working a lot more every day. I never knew how much of a difference working 2 hours later a day would feel. I don’t know why working until 5 felt so different from working until 3, but it affected what I was willing to try to do after work. I feel in a way that I lost a part of my afternoon and free time and for a while I was staying up later at night to fit in that time into my day. But I can’t stay up late since I get up early. So I’ve been working for a while on figuring out more time management plans since I’ve been feeling a bit out of control lately.

This is still a work in progress and it will continue to be that way since things never are stable in my life. But I’m slowly figuring out how to manage my new hours and my life again. And it’s good I’m working on it now while things are still not really back in my life because of the pandemic. I’m putting everything into my calendar now, including the drive time to get places, so I make sure I don’t end up doing work when I need to drive somewhere. I am working on blocking off time in my calendar to cook when I plan on cooking because there have been too many times that I wanted to cook and the next thing I knew it was late and I was hungry. I almost have to over-schedule my day in order to have free time again. And I’ve never had to do that before. But then again, I’ve never worked this many hours.

I know that some of my jobs overlap when I work (and all these jobs know that I do that). But I can’t always overlap my hours. And when you look at my hours combined, in my 3 day jobs (not counting stuff like union service), I’m currently working 60-62 hours a week. I know there are a ton of people who work more than that, but I have never had that many hours before. Even before the pandemic, between my jobs I was working only about 38 hours a week. And yes, I’m grateful for every job that I have and I’m happy that I’m in a better financial place than before. But working more hours does make me hyperaware of the potential for burnout. And that’s why I have to schedule free time into my day. It’s far too easy to get up at 5:45am and be working almost non-stop until 7 or 8pm. And I do take little breaks in my day when I can, but I don’t take too long of a break because I don’t want to slack off in my day.

Since I’ve been scheduling more into my day, I am slowly seeing some improvements. But I haven’t been doing it as much as I should, so I know things can get better. And I’ve said this before, but I really want to figure out a good place with balancing my work and my life while I don’t have much happening in my life. When I start to add more to my life, I know I will need the skills that I’m working on building now. And hopefully the work I’m doing now will help prevent me from feeling as overwhelmed and as much burnout as I know could happen.

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Default ThumbnailMissing Out On Some Fun (or Flexible Time Management) Default ThumbnailSeeing How To Make My New Schedule Work (or I Have A Better Idea Of My Free Time Now) Default ThumbnailBack To An Old Job (or It Feels New and Familiar At The Same Time) Default ThumbnailFitting It All In (or Getting Better At Time Management) Default ThumbnailFinally Back To A Full Work Schedule (or I Really Do Like Having A Stable Schedule) Default ThumbnailGetting Myself Back On Schedule (or At Least This Is A Slow Transition)

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I Got To Practice My Monthly Challenge Early This Month (or Still Working On Not Worrying About Job Things)

Posted on September 3, 2021 | Comments Off on I Got To Practice My Monthly Challenge Early This Month (or Still Working On Not Worrying About Job Things)

When I set my monthly challenge this month to be about not thinking too much in the future about things that may go wrong or right in my life, I assumed a lot of what I would be using that for would be related to things I already know are going on. I didn’t want to stress about moving. I didn’t want to worry more about the pandemic. I didn’t want to overthink dating. But because my life is like this, I had an unexpected curveball right at the start of the month!

Things at my customer service job have been crazy lately, but most of the crazy has been good. I’ve been working more hours, taking on more responsibilities, and helping with projects that will help the company continue to grow. But whenever things change in a job, mistakes can be made too. And while I haven’t made any really bad mistakes, there have been things that weren’t communicated as clearly as they could have or procedures that are in the process of being changed and it’s unclear what is supposed to be done now.

So on Wednesday, my manager asked me if I could have a Zoom call with her the next day (which was yesterday). There weren’t any specifics on why we were having the call, so my brain went to all the horrible things it could be. Because of my work history, I am always terrified that I’m about to be fired. I know that’s now what would be happening this time (right after this meeting was set up I was invited to 2 other meetings that are for my entire department). But I couldn’t stop thinking about all the negatives that it could be. I hate that that’s how I think and that’s exactly why I set my challenge to be this for September.

So for the time between knowing about my meeting and when it started, I really worked on focusing on what I did know and what was not speculation. And I went into my meeting a bit nervous, but not nearly as stressed as I might have been if I wasn’t working on not overthinking the future.

And of course the meeting wasn’t a bad thing. There were some communication things to work out so we had a better line of communication when discussing clients so there wouldn’t as many back and forth emails and texts. And we clarified some things that led to the miscommunication that both of us weren’t able to realize in written communication. Those things needed to be worked out and will only make work better for me going forward.

And then we started to discuss things that aren’t happening yet that we might want to change. I can’t go into too many details about it, but we discussed how to manage client communication better so anyone could help clients without needing access to as many things as we have right now. Also, how to make sure all new clients have everything they need in order to understand the company. Some of this would be about what my role might be like in the future, which is good to hear when I was worried earlier that I had done something really wrong and wondered if I was going to lose my job.

I’ve said this so many times before, but I wonder when I will stop worrying that I will be losing my job every time I have a meeting about something. I’ve gone a significant portion of my life since I have had that happen to me. And I haven’t had any quick turnaround with jobs like I did the year that things were the worst for me. I’ve been with my customer service job for about 9 months, and that’s the shortest time of any of my jobs right now. I’ve been working with my box office job for 7 years already! But I still have this stupid irrational fear of being fired for no reason.

Maybe because I am purposely working on fixing this way of thinking, things will be better for me in the future. At least now I know that some of the tools I wanted to use to test this challenge do work because this wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Just like when I set my monthly challenge, I guess I’ll see in a month how I feel. But I got a little idea now of what it could be like.

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Default Thumbnail3 Months At My New Job (or Having Another Job Review) Default ThumbnailWorking On A Work/Life Balance (or Almost Repeating A Recent Monthly Challenge) Default ThumbnailMonthly Challenge Check-In (or Doing My Own Version Of An OTF Challenge This Month) Default ThumbnailTaking A Month To Reset (or This Doesn’t Really Feel Like A Monthly Challenge) Default ThumbnailA Failed Monthly Challenge (or I’m Possibly Going To Fail Again This Month) Default ThumbnailFailing And Succeeding In One Monthly Challenge (or Another Repeat Challenge This Month)

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Posted in Tough Stuff, Work

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Finally Doing Some Job Training (or I’ll Find A Way To Add In More Hours)

Posted on August 18, 2021 | Comments Off on Finally Doing Some Job Training (or I’ll Find A Way To Add In More Hours)

When I signed my contract for my data entry job for the second half of this year, I knew my job was going to be changing up and I’d be doing something different. I was excited to try out something new and learn new skills. But there were a few delays in getting trained for the new responsibilities, so I’ve only been doing work with social media (which also changed from what I was doing before, but not that much). I knew I’d be trained eventually, but there were other things that I knew had to come first so I was just waiting and that was fine.

But I finally got to train on my new quality assurance check role this week. I’ve never done this type of work before, but I had an idea of what I would be doing. I knew it was mainly work looking at the website and looking for any glitches, errors, or issues. I’ve reported things like that while doing my data entry job as I saw them, but I never had to seek them out. I just reported what I saw as it happened. So I knew that having this as a regular job was going to be different since I needed to make sure I wasn’t overlooking errors.

Fortunately, when I did my training it wasn’t that different from what I was expecting. There are different ways I need to track things so that others can follow up on the errors I’m finding and I have to track what sections of the website I have checked and what still needs to be done, but the things I’m looking for are similar to what I was reporting before.

The way my hours are broken up between this work and the social media work is about 2/3rd QA work and 1/3 social media work. And I’m working on figuring out how I’m going to manage it. I’ve done this many hours for this job before, but never while working as many hours for other jobs. And my newer customer service job has significantly less downtime than my box office job. So while I can overlap work a bit, I can’t do what I was used to doing before the pandemic. I’m still so grateful to have all the work I do have because I am putting myself in a much better financial spot than before, but time management is becoming a big focus.

If I am not careful, I could see myself working close to 12 hours a day on my craziest days. I know I can have burnout if I’m not taking care of myself. And I feel like the risk of burnout is higher when I don’t have much to do outside of my house. I don’t want to be going great for a month or two and then have a huge crash. But I also know that there are plenty of people who work more than 8 hours a day, so it’s doable. And I don’t have to worry about a commute so that makes my long day shorter than what others might experience. But it’s a work in progress for sure.

I am excited to have a new adventure with my work. Having things change up helps to keep things from feeling too routine in my life. And lately, things have been very repetitive in my life, so I’ve been welcoming change. I just have to figure out how to make this change work. But I know I will because I always do.

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Default ThumbnailTraining Day At A New Possible Job (or Next Time, I’ll Give Myself 3 Hours To Get There) Default ThumbnailAnother Job Through A Friend (or Excited To Do Job Training) Default ThumbnailGetting Ready For Changing Up My Job Tasks (or Same Job New Responsibilities) Default ThumbnailAnother Time A Friend Found Me A Job (or It Really Is About Who Knows You) Default ThumbnailBack To An Old Job (or It Feels New and Familiar At The Same Time) Default ThumbnailBack To Back Job Changes (or Unexpected Good News)

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Getting Used To A Full Time Schedule (or I Didn’t Think It Would Feel That Different)

Posted on August 12, 2021 | Comments Off on Getting Used To A Full Time Schedule (or I Didn’t Think It Would Feel That Different)

This week is the first week that I’m working full-time at my customer service job. While I’ve had full-time hours in the recent past when you add up all the hours I did for all my jobs, I never was working 8 hours a day at any particular job. Even before the pandemic when I was working full hours for my box office job, I only worked 7 hours a day and I was always done by 3 pm each day. Now, I’m working  8 hours each weekday for a single job and I’m working until 5 or 6 each evening. Obviously, working more hours is putting me in a better financial spot. But when the extra hours were offered to me originally, I was a bit hesitant. So right now is a bit of a trial period to see how I feel working so many hours.

I was able to negotiate some things with my hours so I’m only working until 6 pm one day a week (for some reason, being done at 5 seems so much better than being done at 6). And my co-workers and I are testing out how to split up responsibilities so I’m not feeling overwhelmed by doing one task for too long. Working in customer service can be a lot, but I’ve been lucky that for the most part the customers are kind and have questions that were easy to get answers for. But there are the occasional situations where it’s very stressful and I am grateful my job is mindful of how that can affect any of us.

And I do know one of their concerns was if I would feel burnt out because I was doubling how many hours a week I was working. I figured it wouldn’t be too bad since I was working until 3 since I was working my box office job. So working until 5 was only adding 2 more hours onto my day. And I have worked 40 hours a week before, so I thought it would be easy enough for me to adjust to it. Technically now, I’m working closer to 60 hours a week when you consider my other jobs, but there is overlap with my hours (all my jobs are aware of this and have approved of me doing so). I’m only a few days into working my new schedule, and I’m already noticing how things feel different for me. And I’m trying to make adjustments so I don’t feel like I need to reduce my hours in the future.

Most of the things are related to time management or comfort while working. Time management has always been a struggle for me. Fortunately, right now there isn’t a lot going on in my life outside of work and my workouts. But I do want to plan time to relax and decompress from my day. I eventually will have more happening in my life, and I need to know how to add that in when I have the chance. But if I’m always exhausted after work, then I won’t be doing much in my evenings except being lazy at home. So I need to find a way to manage my time so I’m not feeling so tired. And that might have to include things like taking more stretching breaks and other things like that so I don’t physically feel exhausted after work.

And along the lines of stretching breaks, I need to find ways to be more comfortable while working. My desk setup hasn’t changed much since I set it up when I built this desk. I have added little things like a better desk chair and a footrest (which sadly broke so I need to replace it), but I want to see what else I can do so my body isn’t hurting after working for so many hours. I do have a cushion on my chair that is supposed to help, but I think I need to either get a better cushion or a better chair. But I also might want to add something on my desk so my arms and wrists don’t hurt after working. Also right now, because it can hurt for sitting for a long time, I take breaks and bring my computer into my room, lay on my bed, and work. I know that’s not the best way to work and I’m sure I’m straining or stressing some part of my body. But sitting at my desk for so long isn’t great for me either. So I have to figure out what I can do so I don’t have other issues while working.

I know this work setup is new to me and I need to still figure out what to do. But I also feel pretty supported by my job in having flexibility if things change or I need to figure out a better situation for me. But hopefully I will get it all figured out and this will just be a blip in my work history before being settled into a new routine.

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Default ThumbnailFinally Back To A Full Work Schedule (or I Really Do Like Having A Stable Schedule) Default ThumbnailGetting More Used To My Schedule (or My First Full Week At The New Job) Default ThumbnailSeeing How To Make My New Schedule Work (or I Have A Better Idea Of My Free Time Now) Default ThumbnailMaking Up A Schedule (or What To Do With My New Free Time) Default ThumbnailFully Using My Work Time (or Having A Job Where I Feel Productive) Default ThumbnailFull Day At The New Job (or Seeing My Old Workplace Abandoned)

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Keeping My Calm (or So Much At Once)

Posted on July 30, 2021 | Comments Off on Keeping My Calm (or So Much At Once)

Even though I just have posted about new job stuff and how I will be working more hours, this post has nothing to do with that even if it seems so. I actually haven’t made any changes just yet, so it’s probably better that I’m having this happen before it does.

I have a problem with being overscheduled, busy, and stressed and then swinging hard in the other direction and being bored. And right now, I’m in a time of being busy. And it’s just the way that everything happened to fall and not something I could have prepared for. I’m trying to stay calm and remember that I don’t have to do everything myself and it’s ok to ask for help. But it’s hard to do that when I want to feel capable and not held back.

Work stuff has been crazy lately, but that might actually be easier when I’m working more hours. I try to clear all the work before my shift ends, and soon I will have twice the time to accomplish that. I don’t want to rush because that’s where mistakes can be made, but I always feel bad if there are things I didn’t get a chance to take care of when my shift ends and someone else’s begins. And I’m aware that I take on a lot more of the work because I handle all the overnight stuff, but I still don’t want the person doing the second half of the day to have anything left when we switch even though they have said it’s ok if that happens.

At my other customer service job, things have been crazy just because that’s how this time of the year goes. We also are almost fully open with about half the staff. So that’s tough for us all and I only am working minimal hours there. So I know I’m lucky but at the same time I still want to get everything done since I am not the person in the morning and don’t want the others to have to do work I couldn’t get to.

And I’m in the middle of election season for my union. This is stressful to go through but so rewarding. And in the past I had a bit more free time to work on things. There’s also the added change with not doing anything in person and having much more done online, which makes my job a bit more than in the past. But I’m working on my time management as much as I can so I have the time to do all my responsibilities or realize early enough that I need help so someone else can jump in.

And I’m sure the fact that it’s been very hot here recently and I’m pretty isolated in my house isn’t helping. I’m not going out and being social outside of my workouts and the rare hangout with a friend. I know I need to take mental health breaks, even if they are just something inside my house. I need to make sure I don’t hit burnout because I know that it will affect me harder than normal when I don’t have ways to mentally escape.

I know that this is temporary and I will likely be feeling bored again. But until that happens, I just have to take care of myself and make sure that these extreme moments don’t become too hard for me to get through.

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Default ThumbnailTrying To Go With The Flow (or Staying Calm And Remembering To Breathe) Default ThumbnailBack To Normal (or Catching Up On Life) Default ThumbnailMissing Out On Some Fun (or Flexible Time Management) Default ThumbnailProductive One Way And Slacking In Another (or Working On Finding Time) Default ThumbnailFiguring Out My Pain (or Staying Calm While Stressing Out) Default ThumbnailStaying Calm In The Crazy (or Is This Month Over Yet?)

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Posted in Acting, Tough Stuff, Work

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Back To Back Job Changes (or Unexpected Good News)

Posted on July 29, 2021 | Comments Off on Back To Back Job Changes (or Unexpected Good News)

After my job news for one of my day jobs earlier this week, I didn’t think I’d have any other day job updates or changes happening anytime soon. Things have been pretty stable for a while. I know I had the option to add more hours to my old box office job, but I didn’t want to since I was balancing everything with my schedule. I was back to working a similar number of hours to what I was doing before the pandemic and I was making about the same that I was before. That seemed to be a big accomplishment to me and I was happy being back in my routine that felt so familiar.

But then on Tuesday, I got an alert at my social media customer service job about a call with the owner of the company. This was to set up a meeting and the subject was something similar to “Your Future With The Company” which basically sounds like the job version of “we need to talk” in a relationship. Fortunately, I was also messaged that this was going to be a positive talk so I wasn’t too stressed out. If I didn’t know that, I probably would have spent the entire day worried I was about to be fired. I still was a little worried about what the news would be, but I tried to focus on the idea that it was going to be good news and that I didn’t need to worry. It didn’t help that my phone meeting ended up being much later than the expected time, so I had extra time to stress a bit. But I stayed calm and tried not to think too much about it all.

And as I was told, it was all good news. I am very aware that the company is growing at a very fast rate (I see all the new clients come in and add most of them to our database). And because of that, the company is growing as far as staff and workload goes. When I was hired, it was part-time and I knew it would possibly stay part-time. Working full-time was briefly discussed when I was interviewing, but it wasn’t a focus of what we discussed. Also, when I was hired about 7 months ago, things weren’t growing as fast as they are now. So things are changing up and the owner of the company wants me to grow with the company too.

So I was offered the opportunity to work full-time starting next week. The owner of the company is aware of my other jobs (the job I was writing about yesterday isn’t really a concern since those are my own hours) and my schedule with my other customer service job. And I said I wasn’t comfortable necessarily leaving my other job for now. We do have new employees who are in training, so maybe in the future I’d consider it, but for now, I know that I’m needed and I do like my work and my co-workers. So I had a very honest and frank conversation with the owner of the company about not feeling ok leaving my other job, and after discussing it more he said he’d be willing to let me try working both jobs at once during my overlap. It would only be an overlap of 8 hours a week (2 hours a day for 4 days a week), so it’s not like it’s a huge chunk of time. I think it would be possible, especially since I have explained what portions of my job I felt ok overlapping with (for example, not doing both customer service chats but doing the customer service chat for one job and emails or data entry for the other). I know that this will be something I have to try and re-evaluate, but at least I’m being given a chance to try.

And even though I have essentially worked full-time hours before, this is a little different from the past. But I’m really happy with how things have been going and seeing where I could see myself in the future. My focus is still on acting, but I like having a more stable day job situation. And I should still be able to have some of the flexibility I need for auditions and other acting-related things. But this is going to put me in a better spot financially and even though it’s doubling my hours at one job, it’s only an extra 2-3 hours a day when you consider the hours I already work my other job. So not the biggest change ever.

Like I had been told ahead of my meeting, this was all good news. And I think it is just the start with good news for this job since I do see ways that I can grow and change within the company. And for a day job, that is an amazing feeling.

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Getting Ready For Changing Up My Job Tasks (or Same Job New Responsibilities)

Posted on July 28, 2021 | Comments Off on Getting Ready For Changing Up My Job Tasks (or Same Job New Responsibilities)

When I had my meeting about my contract ending at my data entry type job, we discussed what things moving forward would make sense for me to do for my job tasks. I’ve been doing the same type of work for a long time for that job, but it hasn’t made sense over the past year. My job was mainly related to posting information regarding events, and there weren’t really any events happening. We did shift to posting virtual events, but it wasn’t the same and I was struggling to find events in time to share.

I was starting to do a little bit of work with social media for that job (funny enough, similar work that I was doing for my social media job so I had lots of ideas about what to do). But there weren’t a lot of things I was doing with social media because it wasn’t something that was being done before so plans were being created and not just followed.

I’ve also occasionally had other tasks with that job, like doing research for annual updates. But for the most part, I was always doing event work and only recently started to do some social media work. And when my contract ended, the meeting I had about what my next contract would like went into what new tasks I might take on as well. And it was pretty clear that it was time for me to move on from the events work. It may be done in a different way now, and I’m actually excited by what the website might look like when that is completed. But since I won’t be doing what a majority of my job has been, I have been getting ready to train on my new tasks.

The majority of my work with my new contract will be doing QA-type work. This won’t be a huge difference from what I was doing before, but I’ll be checking information already on the site and not adding new information myself. I haven’t trained on that just yet, but I should be getting trained in August once a few things are set up for me to be able to access the sections of my work website that I need to be in to work. But this week, I did some discussion about the new plans going forward for the work I’ll be doing in social media.

I have been doing social media work for this job this month, but it’s been a bit limited. I’ve been sharing posts that other accounts have created and promoting events in the community. It’s similar to what I would have posted before on the website, but I’m now sharing it on social media instead. But there is more work that I can do and that’s what was discussed in my meeting this week.

I’m excited about the new opportunities I’ll have soon. I’m going to work on some content creation and also setting up templates so others can do the work. This is work I’m familiar with from my union service, so I’m glad I have the opportunity to use those skills for another job. And it will give me the chance to build on what I already know how to do and I’m sure I’ll learn things that I might not have tried in my union service work. And of course, I’m excited when any of my day job work lets me be a bit creative and that’s something that I haven’t always gotten to do so it makes me really happy.

I’m slowly going to be transitioning into my new tasks with my job, but I think this is all positive steps moving forward. I’ve been with this job for so many years and it makes sense that things would change over the years. And the pandemic might have sped things up a bit with how quickly they changed, but I’m ready to adapt quickly. And maybe things will change when I get my next contract or I get this contract extended. But for now, I’m ready to see what I can do and what other things will come my way.

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A New Year Starting Mid-Year (or I Forgot This Was Coming Up)

Posted on July 6, 2021 | Comments Off on A New Year Starting Mid-Year (or I Forgot This Was Coming Up)

I don’t know if it’s that this year still feels weird or time flies by and I don’t think about it too much, but there are some things that I seem to just be forgetting about this year that I should have been expecting. It’s not bad, but it’s funny when it happens because I’m surprised and know I shouldn’t be. And I had that happen last week with one of my day jobs.

My day job where I do data entry work is on an annual contract, and I keep getting either new contracts or extensions. Every time a contract ends, I do have a little fear that I won’t get a new one, but that hasn’t really happened. I have had gaps where I was waiting on a new contract, but I know one is coming and it’s just a matter of time before it’s settled. And for the most part, my contracts run from July to June. But whenever a contract is ending mid-year, I seem to forget about it coming up.

And that’s exactly what happened last week. I was submitting my June invoice (this job pays me once a month and I have to invoice my hours to get paid). After submitting it, my boss thanked me and reminded me that was my last day of my contract and I didn’t have a new one just yet. I did panic a bit because I know I’m fine without that job but it’s a struggle. But my boss then asked if we could have a call at the end of the week to discuss what’s next.

I tried to stay positive and not worry about things, but the few days between knowing my contract ended and my meeting happening were a little stressful. Fortunately, my stress was for nothing because the meeting went well.

First the good stuff, I will be getting another contract and hopefully it will be ready for me to approve and sign within a week. It will be backdated to the 1st, so I’m able to work now and invoice it for the end of the month. And my job will be switching up a bit and focusing more on social media where I will have the chance to be creative and add some fun to things. I also might be getting trained on a new part of the job doing more website maintenance and QA type stuff. That will possibly come a bit later since I will need to be trained on a different section of the backend of the website than I’ve ever used. But I do like to learn new things and I think this will be a job I’m good at!

For the not so great news, my contract for now will only be until the end of 2021. This is not about me but because the funding for the service is only approved so far through 2021. They will probably get the rest of the government funding and then my contract will be extended through June like normal, but that’s not a guarantee (but I feel like it’s very certain). And I won’t be doing my event data entry work anymore. The site was glitching a lot and we discovered that several weeks of my work was gone. I was upset to hear that because I didn’t want them to think I wasn’t working. But I wasn’t the only one experiencing the issues, so the way events will be posted is probably going to change. We discussed some ideas in my meeting, but I’m not sure how involved in that process I’ll be moving forward. And maybe when the site is less glitchy, I’ll go back to that work. But it does feel odd to not be doing something that has been a part of my job since they hired me.

I’m not sure yet how many hours a week I’ll have, but even if it’s only 5 hours a week (so 1 a day), that will help me with my budgeting and making sure I don’t have to start only paying part of my credit card. And I do enjoy the work and the people I work with, so I’m glad that will continue. While I do like my other jobs where I don’t have to worry each year if I’ll get a new contract, if this is the worst part of the job I think I’m a pretty lucky person!

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Finally Back To A Full Work Schedule (or I Really Do Like Having A Stable Schedule)

Posted on June 9, 2021 | Comments Off on Finally Back To A Full Work Schedule (or I Really Do Like Having A Stable Schedule)

For the past year, there have been so many changes with my work schedule. Before the pandemic, I had a very stable work schedule. It wasn’t necessarily the same schedule every day, but from week to week it was the same unless I was working a few extra hours to bank hours to take time off. Even with having one of my jobs being on my own time and having a lot of flexibility, I was consistent with the hours I worked and that allowed me to have stability in my life and to plan for things outside of work time.

At the start of the pandemic, I had reduced work hours for a while. Then it got reduced even more to only working 3 hours a week to handle voicemails and pass off messages. And then in August, I was out of work with my box office job. I still had my flexible one, but it wasn’t a lot of hours.

And then, when I got my new job, things started to stabilize again. I still had some fluctuations with my work schedule with my hours changing slightly and then switching up my job responsibilities. But it’s remained pretty consistent since I completed my training with the job. And then recently, I went back to my old box office job for a few hours a week. It was a bit of an adjustment to get used to working that job again, but fortunately I was able to pick it up quickly. I knew because of my new job, I wasn’t going back to the hours I had with the old job. But I also knew there was a little room for additional hours and that it might be happening.

And this week, I’m increasing my hours at my old job. I still don’t work there on Mondays since that company is closed on Mondays and I have already been working on Saturdays for the full shift. But now, I will be working 2 hours in the afternoon Tuesday-Friday. And this pretty much maxes me out for what hours I could do. I guess I could add the first hour in the morning 2 days a week, but unless things get crazy at that job I doubt it will be happening.

I have felt like I’ve been back to my full schedule since I started back at my old job, but now I’m really back to something closer to my old schedule. I am working earlier than I used to a few days a week since my new job has a different schedule than my old job. But for so long I worked until 3pm most days and that’s what I’ll be back to now. There is a slight chance I may be adding more hours to my new job later in the day, but that’s something that would happen in the future and it’s not something I’m worried about just yet. For now, I’m just happy that I’m back to what feels like my normal schedule from before the pandemic.

I’ve said this before, but I’m glad I had a slow transition back into working. I think it would have been overwhelming to go from no work to a full work schedule again. I’m still working on breaking some of the bad habits I gained when I wasn’t working and I’m glad I’ve had the time to slowly adjust to it. I do still have a few struggles (mainly with not getting enough sleep), but I’m working on getting better each week and I know I’ll be back to how I’m hoping to be soon enough.

And besides loving the consistency with a full work schedule, I’m also glad from a financial standpoint. I’ve been doing ok for a bit, but it’s because I’ve had money saved. And I don’t want to keep using that money to pay my bills. Since starting back at my old job, it’s helped even though it’s not a ton of money. And with the increase in hours, it still isn’t a ton of money but it will help. I’ve been doing a bad job with my budgeting again, and knowing I’m at what should be my schedule for a long time is motivation to work on a fresh start with my budgeting app. I know that I still don’t make a lot of money and I have to be careful, but knowing that I should be making enough now to not have to stress each month is a great feeling.

As much as I wish I lived a life where I didn’t need to have day jobs and could live off of my acting career only, that’s not my reality. I hope it will be my reality one day, but until then I need to be happy with my day job situation. And I’m finally in a good place again with my day jobs and I’m so happy that this is just one more thing that feels like I’m getting back a bit of my pre-pandemic life again.

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