Category Archives: Work

Seeing How To Make My New Schedule Work (or I Have A Better Idea Of My Free Time Now)

Posted on January 13, 2021 | Comments Off on Seeing How To Make My New Schedule Work (or I Have A Better Idea Of My Free Time Now)

Last week was my first week with my normal schedule at my new job. I am glad I was eased into the new job since there was a lot to learn. So many things were similar to my old customer service job but just different enough that I had to be aware of what I was doing so I wasn’t doing what I did at the old job. It was good that I had a lot of time with training and a shorter schedule at first. Having a full week off for the holidays was a bit tough, but I took that time to work on reviewing everything I learned.

I’m not feeling totally confident with the new job, but I’m getting closer each day. I understand different processes and policies and the questions I have for my manager are becoming the more rare and specific things and not the general questions. I feel like this is progress and I’m proud of it. And while it’s not as many hours as I’ve worked before at my old job, it’s been a long time since I’ve worked this many hours so I’m getting used to not having my time be mine as much as it was for most of last year.

I also got an update from my data entry job and what the new contract would be like. The new contract is still being worked on, but I saw what they were thinking and my job is going to be transitioning a bit. I will be getting 4 times the hours I’ve had recently (although the reduced hours were partially at my request to deal with some things with unemployment), so I will be closer to the number of hours I had when I started years ago. But most of my hours will be moving away from the data entry work and going into doing some social media work.

This was something we discussed in our recent meeting about my new contract, so it’s not unexpected. How the hours will be split was slightly more unexpected because I thought it would be more focused on the data entry work. But I’m good with this idea and how it will be for me when I am working with the new contract (for now, I’m doing work as it was listed on the old contract, so I haven’t started the social media work yet).

Between the 2 jobs, it won’t add up to exactly 40 hours a week, but it will be close so I feel like it will still feel like full-time work. And while there could be some overlap with the hours I work, I feel like it won’t be as much as before. At least not at first as I need to pay more attention to my new job than I did for my old customer service job. At my old job, when we didn’t have customers to help, I was just sitting and waiting. With the new job, there are other tasks I need to work on when I am not assisting a customer. There is a bit of free time, but I am pretty busy during my hours each day.

And I know this is normal. Working and having a ton of free time is not normal and was a luxury that I got spoiled with. I planned my days in the past assuming that in a 7-hour shift I would probably have about 4 hours when I could do anything I needed to do as long as I was still at my computer. I would try to be productive during that free time working my data entry job or working on writing blog posts, but occasionally I would just watch videos online while waiting for a customer. Most people do not get to relax while they are working. Often they have to work after they are supposed to be done. I just got spoiled with how things were for me for so long.

But it’s not that bad. This is just something I have to get used to and I know it won’t be a huge struggle once I figure it out. I just have to work on my time management again with the new schedule. I have to plan out things during my before and after work time that before I might have done during work. I will still be able to fit everything in, especially since there is nothing I have outside of work right now. If I have to work on other things for a few hours after work, I’m not missing anything I had planned. I’m not going out to see anyone so all that time is mine. And it will be good to work through this plan while I have nothing else to do. Hopefully, by the time things are reopening, I will have a better idea of how to manage all my time, and my after-work time will be more stable from day to day.

I know how lucky I have been in so many ways. I am lucky with how my old job was with allowing me so much free time. I’m lucky I was able to do both jobs together because of my free time. I’m lucky that I got another job that is remote and pays well. I’m lucky that my other job is able to increase my hours so I should be making enough to be ok soon. And I’m lucky that I have the luxury of time right now and I don’t have to worry about taking care of others and I can be a bit selfish with what I do each day.

Just like with so much I’ve done lately with my schedule, I will figure out how to make it work and I have the time to slowly do that. I will need to get back into time management planning again, which is something I haven’t had to do in a while. But soon enough, I will have it down to a consistent plan and hopefully, it stays that way for a while.

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Default ThumbnailGetting More Used To My Schedule (or My First Full Week At The New Job) Default ThumbnailMaking Up A Schedule (or What To Do With My New Free Time) Default ThumbnailGetting Myself Back On Schedule (or At Least This Is A Slow Transition) Default ThumbnailBack To Back Work Fails (or Attempting To Be Productive) Default ThumbnailAt Least A Little More Work (or Getting My Contract Extended Again) Default ThumbnailGoodbye To July (or Looking Forward To Having Steady Work In August)

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Feeling Optimistic About My Jobs (or Working This Year Has Been Weird)

Posted on December 24, 2020 | Comments Off on Feeling Optimistic About My Jobs (or Working This Year Has Been Weird)

When 2020 started, I was feeling like my job was pretty stable. Even though my box office job didn’t pay me enough to have it as my only job, it was a steady income that I could count on. And I did have my data entry job to help add to my income. I wanted to do some job hunting this year to find something better, but I also knew how lucky I was to have a job.

Then the pandemic hit and at first, my box office job wasn’t affected. Then it started to change. At first, I was working reduced hours but it was still bringing in decent money. Then it became 3 hours a week and almost no income. And then in August, I was officially let go from that job. My main income (and the job that felt most stable) was done for now. And there is no timeline for when my job will be back because it’s based on the pandemic ending. I had hoped earlier this year that things would be back by now. I still want to hope that they will be back by the spring, but I have also learned that things are so unpredictable.

And my data entry job has been a bit weird since the pandemic as well. Because so much of my work is based on adding events to a calendar, there was a sharp decrease in work for me. Some other factors changed my hours too, but they were things that were a bit more in my control and I was ok with the changes. I’m grateful that at least I had this job plus my unemployment this year. I don’t know what I would have done without it. But I also knew that I couldn’t just sit around and hope for the best.

And that’s one of the reasons I’m so grateful that I got my new job. While I won’t be working my full hours until January and I actually have the next week off, it’s been great! I’m feeling more and more comfortable with the work and what I need to do. And it will almost make up the income that I lost when I lost my box office job.

Plus, I’m really having a great time with this new job. Some of the work is stuff that I can apply in other parts of my life, which is fun! And it’s been awesome getting to know my new co-workers. It’s been all virtual stuff, but that’s ok. There was a work Zoom holiday party and it was nice getting to have time to meet everyone and get to know more about everyone outside of more professional and official stuff. And the best thing is that I feel appreciated. That’s not something you always have at every job. I feel so lucky that they appreciate my work and understand that I am a part of the team. I felt even more appreciated when earlier this week a gift basket arrived with a holiday present from the company!

I was not expecting a gift considering that I haven’t been there for an entire month yet. But it made me smile so much!

And the positive things continued when I had a meeting with my bosses from my data entry job. Technically, my contract ends on the 31st, but there will be a new contract that starts on the 1st. Things still have to be figured out and finalized, but it will be done and that’s a big relief. And in my meeting, I was able to be very honest about how I have been feeling about the job. Lately, I have felt like I was not doing my job because there aren’t things I can add to the website. I feel like I am almost wasting money. It was good to hear from my bosses that they don’t think that about me, but it also opened up the conversation to figure out the best way I can work on the new contract. I think there will be new jobs for me to do that are much more specific goals so I can have things to work toward and have a better way to do time management.

Hopefully, between my new job and the new way I will do my data entry job, things will be much better for me in 2021. And when my box office job comes back, I do hope that they offer me my job again. I don’t know how I would balance everything, but I would at least like the chance to try. But I’m in a much better place now to wait for that job to open than I was before. If it doesn’t come back until almost the end of next year, I will be ok. And I can look into managing all the jobs then. For now, I’m just focused on the jobs I have now.

This year has been such an up and down year for my jobs. It started in a pretty ok place, got bad, and it seems like things are going to end better than the year started. Even though I wanted to find a new job, I’ve had that goal for a while and never accomplished it. And I thought if I found a new job, it was going to be something that wasn’t interesting or that made me happy. This year has been full of so many surprises, and most of them have been bad surprises. So to have a good surprise to end the year is so nice!

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Getting More Used To My Schedule (or My First Full Week At The New Job)

Posted on December 16, 2020 | Comments Off on Getting More Used To My Schedule (or My First Full Week At The New Job)

Last week, I wrote about my new job and how I now have to work on maintaining a schedule again. And last week was a big whirlwind. Just from the time that I interviewed to the time that I was hired was crazy. And jumping immediately into the job was a bit overwhelming.

I told the people training me that’s how I was feeling and fortunately they understood. It’s a lot to take on and I had some assumptions about the job that were wrong. Most of the work in customer service is very similar to things I’ve been doing before, it’s just the method of the work that is different. For example, I’m used to helping customers on a chat system that runs through a website. It’s like instant messaging and the type of customer service chat that I think most of us are familiar with. But the new system is actually a text-based system. This does have a lot of benefits to it, but it changes how I will work and I will have to adjust to the idea that I won’t have customers sitting on a website as I help them. The assumption that the chat system was based on a website was completely on me, so it’s not like I was misled. I just didn’t think to ask and it’s been a bit switch in my thought process.

And of course, with any new job, there are new systems to learn and new protocols to follow. I’m very grateful that everything does seem to make sense and they are based on sites I’m familiar with. Even if it’s not the exact website I’ve used before, they have a lot of the same elements that I’m used to. That has made my training a little easier. At this point, I feel like I understand the job much more than before. I’m just working on putting together the pieces and the workflow of how things go. But that’s possibly something that I just have to jump into (with supervision) and start working through. And that will likely be happening this week.

I also got trained at the end of last week on the other part of my new job doing outbound engagement. Again, this is similar to something I have done before but different enough that I have to remember specific things. And it can be a bit scary starting something new that doesn’t have as much of a chance for starting with supervision, but I also feel confident that I can handle it. I know that I will likely be getting feedback and need to make some adjustments to the work I’m doing, but I’m expecting it so hopefully it will be easier when it happens. I just want the clients to be happy with my work and to have my work seem similar to what others do so they don’t realize I’m the new one doing this.

Because I’m still training for the customer service part of my job, my schedule is still not completely stable. Each day I work different hours as I learn different parts of the job. But this is just for training and soon I will be doing very steady hours for this work. It will likely be about 3 hours every morning, which might increase eventually but I accepted the job knowing it was probably only 3 hours a day. But I do also have 90 minutes of work for the outbound engagement side to do every day and I still have my data entry job that I do a few hours a week. I will eventually figure out how I want to schedule all my time, but for now, I’m just taking it day by day. I’m hoping once my schedule is regular, I can split up my outbound engagement to be partially before my customer service shift and partially after (doing 90 minutes in one sitting is actually harder than I expected). And I will try to fit in my data entry where I can. And if I find out that I can return to my other customer service job, I will figure it out at that point. But for now, I don’t expect to be asked if I want to come back for at least a few more months.

Right now, I am not making what I was making before, but it’s much closer than what it’s been for most of this year. And making any money is good these days. I will be losing my unemployment because of my work, but I’m ok with that. When we had the supplemental unemployment, things were different and I was doing ok. But since that ended, I was making only a fraction of what I was before. And if you make more than what you would get in unemployment, you don’t get it anymore. But I’ve been working with less money for most of this year, so I will be fine without it.

I know that the world is still far from normal, but things are finally starting to feel a bit more normal for me. I know that it’s not completely there and I cannot live this way the rest of my life, but having a regular schedule is something that I know I’ve needed. As much as I’ve tried to do this on my own, it’s nice to have something to actually work on every day. And any issues I’m having with figuring out how to schedule things are not that bad. It’s more about just getting adjusted to the new schedule and I know I will be ok before I know it. And because this is how things always work, as soon as I’m used to the new schedule I bet things will change again (hopefully, a change because I get my other job back). And then I’ll be back to figuring out my schedule again and I’ll have to just do it.

But for now, I’m just getting through my training and being really excited about my new job. I know I jumped right into working and it was a little much at first, but also I think I started at a good time because soon I will have shortened weeks because of the holidays. So hopefully that little break will be time for me to relax and be prepared to fully jump back in and make 2021 a much better year for me.

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Getting Myself Back On Schedule (or At Least This Is A Slow Transition)

Posted on December 10, 2020 | Comments Off on Getting Myself Back On Schedule (or At Least This Is A Slow Transition)

For most of this year, I haven’t had too much of a schedule. Once I had my work hours reduced, most of my days were free. When I lost my old customer service job, I did continue to log into our chat systems a few mornings a week to check in with my manager and to see if she needed me to help with anything. I wasn’t being paid to do that, but I also wasn’t really working. I mainly did it so I had something that I needed to do each morning. I didn’t want to get into a bad habit of sleeping in and not doing much each day. So those mornings helped to keep me on track.

Even when I’ve mostly been out of work, I rarely sleep in. There are 2 days a week that I can, but I don’t sleep in that often. Sometimes I’ll sleep in one of those days, but I have been pretty good about making sure I keep my sleep schedule somewhat consistent. The issue has been that I haven’t been going to sleep at the same time that I used to, so that was making me tired. I’ve been working on getting my sleep more on schedule, and I’m slowly getting there.

And now, I actually have a schedule to work with again. It’s not too crazy because  I’m only working a few hours each day, but it’s still something. And my schedule right now isn’t the same every day. It may get that way when I’m done with training and fully working. But right now, my schedule shifts each day to be a different time so I can be trained with different things.

Even with my old work schedule being slightly different each day, having a schedule that isn’t consistent from day to day is still tough to get used to. And because I’ve also been dealing with having almost no schedule for a while, I haven’t been great with time management. I only have had a few things I need to do each day and it didn’t really matter when I did them. So I got pretty lazy with when I was doing stuff. If I didn’t get to something until late at night, that was fine. I could put some things off for a day without it being an issue. I could do the things I wanted to do when I wanted to do them without worrying about a scheduling conflict.

Now, I still have a lot of flexibility, but I also have to be mindful about my schedule and making sure that I don’t start working on something right before I have to focus on something else. It’s not a big deal, but it’s enough of a change for me to really pay attention to what time it is and what I have to do each day. And I’m sure I’ve had this feeling before when I went from being unemployed to having a job, but it’s also a bit different because I’m still not going out to do things and most of the things I’m doing are in my home. So it feels a little less like a schedule than when I would have to go out for things and plan for traffic.

If I got my old job back before I started this new one, I would guess I would struggle almost more. Especially if I was brought back to my full schedule. It’s not easy to go from having almost all the free time in the world to a set schedule. At least with my new job, my schedule is only a few hours so I can still have a lot of the flexibility that I’m used to. I’m easing into the idea of having a schedule again. And I think I’m going to build upon it even more than I need to. While I don’t need to blog at the same time every day, I’d like to have that as a part of my schedule. I’ve also been doing my workouts at different times based on when I get up and going and I know that having a set schedule would be better for me. Especially if I think I might start trying the outdoor workouts. And I want to make my time to watch tv or do other lazy things set times instead of accidentally wasting away most of a day because I’m not focused on making sure I do other things.

I know that it might be a while before I need to have a more set schedule like what I’m thinking of doing, but I have the luxury right now to take my time to get back to that. I don’t have to worry about being on a schedule immediately. I can play around with things and see how it goes. Right now, it’s not a lot that has to be done at a specific time, but there are things that need to be that way. And I need to make other parts of my life work around it. But I see this as a positive thing. I’ve been a bit aimless lately and this will hopefully get me to feel a bit more grounded. Maybe this will help me get other things on track in my life. I don’t know if it will and I’m not expecting it. But it would be something nice if it did happen.

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Another Job Through A Friend (or Excited To Do Job Training)

Posted on December 9, 2020 | Comments Off on Another Job Through A Friend (or Excited To Do Job Training)

My job situation has been not great since March. Even though I was still working my customer service job a bit from March until the beginning of August, I was only working limited hours. There was a point where I was only checking the voicemails and not doing much else with work. And since August, I’ve only been working my data entry job and that is already limited hours.

In normal times, job hunting is tough. Especially for me with trying to find a remote job. But job hunting during a pandemic is another thing. In one sense, almost all jobs are remote so that helps me a bit. But so many people are out of work so it’s been hard to even get to a job interview. I’ve been spending time every day looking for jobs and applying, with no luck. But then recently, a friend let me know about a job opening at their company.

They work for a social media management company and there was a position open to help with customer engagement. It was only about 1 hour a day, but any work right now is really good. So I sent in my resume and had a phone interview with the owner of the company. I’ve actually met the owner before through my friend, so the interview was pretty casual. I felt pretty good that I would be offered the job because of my background in other social media work. But in my phone interview, the owner and I started talking about my job situation and I mentioned how I was pretty much out of work. The owner had mentioned there might be an opening in their customer care department and I shared some of my stories from my job. He asked if I’d be interested in interviewing for the other position as well, and I said yes.

Last week, I had a Zoom interview for the customer care job. I made sure I was sitting in the spot in my house with the best lighting and I propped up my laptop so that it would be a better angle. I don’t have a stand or anything for my laptop, so I just stacked some books and mail and it worked.

The interview was with their customer care manager and my friend, so it ended up being pretty casual. But I felt really good about things after it and just hoped for the best. And on Monday, I found out I got the customer care job!

Between the 2 jobs, it will still be part-time work, but that’s ok with me. I still have my data entry job and there might be more hours for me in the future. I also still hope that I will be back to my other customer service job once theater shows are safer to go to. But for now, going from pretty much out of work to having a regular part-time job is amazing!

This week I’ll be doing training every day and I’m not sure when I’ll officially be starting with my hours. But I’m not worried about that. I’m just excited that I have a new job since this is something I’ve been working on for a while. And like all the other jobs I’ve had recently, this is another job through a friend. I don’t know why it’s ended up that way, but it is true that you have a better chance of getting a job. And I’ve been lucky that my friends have been referring me to jobs that are perfect for me.

Having a new job is a great way to end this year and start next year. I hope that is a sign of other positive things to come my way! And I’m so happy that not only do I have a new job (which I needed), but it’s a new job I’m excited about. That makes things even better.

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On Hold With Work For Now (or It’s Now A Waiting Game)

Posted on August 5, 2020 | Comments Off on On Hold With Work For Now (or It’s Now A Waiting Game)

When the pandemic hit, I knew my day job doing customer service was going to be affected. And it was affected in stages. First, my hours were cut in half (same as my salary). That went on for a little while. And when that was happening, it was only me and my manager working. My manager did work a little more than I did, but we still pretty much were working together as a team.

Then, my manager had to take leave. I’m not going to go into why because that is her business, but she let me know that she wouldn’t be working and it was going to just be me. And when that happened, my hours and pay got cut even more. I was down to working only 3 hours a week (1 hour a day for 3 days a week) and my pay was cut even more. It was less than my hourly pay would be for 3 hours, but I also understood that the company wasn’t bringing in any money because all of our locations were closed down. So any payments that I could get was nice. And it wasn’t too hard because we also didn’t have a lot of customers. But even though my manager wasn’t working, she would still log in to our chat system to keep me company and to help me out when I needed an extra set of eyes to do some research.

And that’s what my life has been like for the past few months. Minimal work, but I also was collecting unemployment (you can collect to make up what you aren’t earning if you have reduced hours). It wasn’t ideal, but it was what it was and I was grateful to have some schedule and sense of normalcy.

Then things changed again.

Last week, I was put on hold from my customer service job. My manager was going to take over the hours that I was doing (which does make sense as she is the manager and there are some higher-level things they are going to try to work on now). And I was technically out of a job. I do still have my other job doing research, but that is limited hours to begin with. Fortunately, I’m not going to be losing money since I will get it in my unemployment now instead of my paycheck (although we did lose the $600 bump which is something I really needed). And I am going to log into the chat system for the hours I was working to be there for my manager the way that she was there for me. I’m technically not working when I’m logged in, but I’m there so she’s not alone and if she needs help looking something up in the ticketing system I can do so. And just like I was grateful for the limited hours I had to make things feel a bit normal, I’m grateful to be logging in so that I feel like I have a schedule and responsibility.

The owner of the company did tell me that the plan is to hire me back as soon as they can. But we don’t know when things will be back to normal again. It’s hard when our shows are large crowds in a room sitting at tables together. It’s exactly what you aren’t supposed to be doing right now. There are a few cities that are open and have shows because their case numbers are low enough, but it’s a fraction of what is normally open. But I do feel grateful that the owner said that he was planning on bringing me back. I don’t feel like I was fired. I’m just on hold until I can return to work. I still consider myself an employee of the company and there is no reason for me to think that when work starts up again that I won’t be coming back.

I’m really hoping that the unemployment bump returns because that will make me feel much more comfortable about my situation right now. I am much luckier than most people because I do have some money saved that I was hoping to use for something fun or for a future down payment on a condo, but I can use it for rent and bills if necessary. I also know I can ask my parents for help if I really need it. I’m so grateful for those options, but I hope that I don’t have to use them.

I did work on my resume and update it (and used a new template to make it look better) and I probably will look into other remote jobs that have openings right now. I don’t necessarily want to find a new job, but unless I know the unemployment bump is coming back I will need to figure out how to make money. Maybe I’ll luck out and find something that is remote and temporary and I can go back to my customer service job when that is back. I know there are jobs right now for grocery stores or delivery services because those are needed, but because I do have a higher risk of getting sick I don’t feel like taking one of those would be the best thing. So I’m only looking at openings for remote work.

I know I will get through this time. This is temporary. Things will be reopening again and my job will be coming back. I would love to know exactly when that would be happening or to have an idea of how long this will last, but we really don’t know. I doubt any of us expected to still be in this situation in August. Especially with it being worse than it was before. But eventually, it will be better. And I’ll be back to work and so will my co-workers. I do miss working with them and I can’t wait until we are virtually reunited and back to what we are used to.

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Some Advice For Working From Home (or One Thing I Was Ready For)

Posted on March 19, 2020 | Comments Off on Some Advice For Working From Home (or One Thing I Was Ready For)

I’ve been very lucky that I’ve been working from home for several years. The jobs I have now aren’t the first ones I’ve done from home, but they are the jobs I’ve done from home for the longest length of time. All my previous work from home was a temporary thing or only lasted a month or two. And I remember when I started those jobs that I was excited to not have to drive to an office, but I also wasn’t sure how the entire set-up would work for me. And when I started my current jobs, I had that same concern but I also have had enough time to get into a good routine and things seem easy for me now.

And with so many people around the country working from home for the first time now, I thought it would be good for me to share some of the tips that I’ve learned over the years so that others can have an easier time working from home. Hopefully, those of you who are used to going into work (and like going into work) are able to be back in your offices soon. But I have a feeling that it will be at least a month or two before that will be happening. So getting comfortable while working from home is a necessity so you are able to be productive.

The first thing about working from home is remembering that it is still work time. You aren’t having a day off at home with work on the side (unless your job is like that). For most people, the hours that you work are still the hours that you work. You aren’t able to goof off or do whatever you want. I know that some of my friends have said in the past that I was lucky to work from home because I could do whatever I wanted all day. But when I’m working, I’m tied to my computer. I do get up to get water or go to the bathroom, but for the most part, I’m sitting at my desk for those hours. There may be some people who don’t have to work as seriously at home as I do, but making sure you have official work hours is important so you do get your work done.

And going along with that, maintaining some sort of schedule is important too. Still having mealtimes and trying to go to bed and wake up at normal hours is important. It can be easy to snack all day while at home since you have all your food there, but making sure you have whatever meals you normally eat in a day helps to make things feel more normal. And if you don’t usually bring lunch with you to work (so you wouldn’t have easy to put together things at home), make sure you have something that is easy to make for lunch is important. I usually don’t eat a real lunch while working. Instead, I have snacks for lunch that I eat between customers. And going to bed and waking up when you normally do helps make sure you don’t stay up all night and sleep all day (unless that is what you do because you work at night).

This next one might be a bit harder since many of us are stuck at home, but it’s also important to have some sort of break when you finish work. You don’t want to feel like you are still working because you haven’t left the space you were in. For many of us, going outside for a walk (as long as you aren’t in a crowded area) is still ok, so that’s a good idea to break up work time from home time. Even just moving from one place in your house to another can help. Or make a fun phone call when work is done. Just something that splits up the time in your head so you feel like you have left work.

And while some people think it would be fun to work in your PJs and work from bed, I honestly don’t recommend it. Working from your bed can make it tough to be productive. And it might not be the best place to work on a computer for a long time. If you have a desk or kitchen table, I’d recommend that over working from bed. And I am a huge fan of working in comfortable clothes, but they are never what I slept in the night before. Even if that means I take of PJs I slept in and just put on clean PJs, I’ll do that. I need something to feel like I am getting ready for my day.

Hopefully, if you are working from home you are having an easy transition. Maybe your company will discover people can work from home and you’ll be given that option for the future if you want to. And if you aren’t enjoying it, I hope that some of my tips help and that you can get back into your office quickly.

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At Least A Little More Work (or Getting My Contract Extended Again)

Posted on February 28, 2020 | Comments Off on At Least A Little More Work (or Getting My Contract Extended Again)

My day job situation has been such an interesting ride lately. I’ve been saying that I needed to find another job, but then I get more work that allows me to make enough money and I push off the job search. That’s been the cycle I have been in for probably a few years now. I’m at least in a slightly better financial situation now where I don’t have to stress if my contract at my data entry job ends, but I also don’t want to take it too easy and find myself in that spot again in the future.

The contract that I’m on for the job now is all about helping to launch a new website. I am doing the same work that I have almost always been doing, but it’s a new site and we are starting from scratch. So all the events that I had entered in the past were not on the site (we couldn’t transfer them to the new site) and I had to enter everything that we wanted on the new site. Types of events were split up so I’m not doing all the same type of work that I did before, but I’m doing a lot of the same stuff. And this new website was supposed to launch a while ago and things got delayed a few times.

None of the delays were things we were in control of and that I felt I was at fault for. The design took longer than expected. The backend system that we needed to use for entering events had glitches. The website wasn’t allowing us to log in. We had to be trained on the new system (and then trained again when the system changed). This was all fine and I wasn’t upset because there was some work I was able to do while waiting for the site to be ready so I was still able to be paid.

We finally were able to start entering events properly last week. And we have been rushing to get as much work done as possible because the site was supposed to launch next month. But I was so relieved when I got an email this week that the launch was being delayed so we had more time to enter events. They wanted the site to have much more information on it before the public was using it. And I completely agree with this idea. Having limited events isn’t going to motivate people to use the site.

The only issue was that my contract was supposed to end at the end of this month. I had hopes that I would get another contract because I knew that they needed on-going help with the site like I did before, but that hadn’t really been discussed yet since the focus was trying to get events up on the site and not a future contract. But I was able to get an extension of my contract so I will continue to work next month (it may go into April as well, but I’m not sure yet). And hopefully soon, I will be told about a new contract so I can continue to work through this year.

I’m even more optimistic that there may be another contract coming up for me because I have a potential new job I can do coming up. I don’t know much about it (I have a conference call to discuss it today), but it may give me another 5-10 hours of work a week. Right now, I’m doing about 15 hours a week on entering things into the new site, but once the site is live that will probably go down to 10 hours or under a week. So having another job I can do to add more hours will be a really good thing!

I have no idea about this new job and what the timeline is for it. I can hope that it’s something on-going so I can have a long contract with a lot of work. But even if it’s only for a few months, that’s a few months of making more money and I will be grateful for that.

I know eventually, I need to figure out a better job situation. Even if that means I have to stop working my customer service job because I find a full-time job that has the flexibility I need. But at least for now, I am working enough and that should continue for a little while. So I can be picky about finding a new job and not just applying for anything because I am desperate. I would love to find a new job that has a bit more flexibility than the jobs I have now. It would be amazing if I could find a way to work 4 days a week instead of 5 because I could work longer hours on those days. And now I have the luxury of searching for a job that fits exactly what I want and hopefully I will find it. And when that happens, I guess I’ll just have to see what will come from it.

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Not Quite Winning At Taxes This Year (or Owing Money And Seeing Car Accidents)

Posted on February 26, 2020 | Comments Off on Not Quite Winning At Taxes This Year (or Owing Money And Seeing Car Accidents)

I try to get my taxes done by the end of February each year. First, I want to get them done so I know what happened with all my crazy tax situations so I don’t have to stress out about them. But also, the place I go to for my taxes has cheaper rates if you do your taxes before March. I’ve been pretty lucky with my tax situation since I have started getting them done locally instead of having my parents’ tax guy do them. There are several weird things about my taxes and what I can deduct so it’s good that I go to someone who specializes in situations like mine. Plus, my tax preparer, Daphne, has become a friend so going in to see her is always fun!

I had my appointment on Monday evening, so I gave myself plenty of time to drive there in traffic. Traffic is always bad and people are always driving crazy, but this time it was just so much worse than normal. I saw 4 car accidents happen right in front of me! Most of them were from dumb mistakes like not looking at their blind spot when changing lanes or turning on an unprotected left when a car was coming straight. I was lucky that nobody hit me, but it made me even more cautious than normal while driving there.

I got to my appointment early because of how much time I gave myself to get there, so I had some time to relax before the stress of seeing what will happen with my taxes. I have been very lucky with getting money back when I pay my estimated payments correctly and with the deductions that I am allowed to take because all my jobs are independent contractor work. But this time, when I was preparing for my appointment I felt like I didn’t have as many deductions as I normally do. So as I prepared my forms I thought that perhaps this time I would owe money instead of getting money back. Fortunately, I still had some money saved from what I set aside with each paycheck, so I had money to pay if I did owe.

I try my best to be super organized with my taxes and paperwork when going into my appointment, and I know that Daphne really appreciates that I do that. It makes her job a bit easier when everything is ready for her to enter it into the system and she doesn’t have to search for something or ask me what I meant by something I filled out. I will also say, the packet that everyone who goes to the office I go to needs to fill out before an appointment helps too. And I have started to organize my things throughout the year in a similar system so when I fill the packet out I can do it quickly.

Because things were so organized, Daphne was able to see quickly that I would owe money. And she and I decided to investigate a bit because it said I owed about $1000 and in the past, it was so different even if I did owe. I thought maybe I didn’t have enough deductions because there were a few things that I usually spend money on that I didn’t in 2019. But when we compared my deductions, I was very close to the same amount in 2018. But then we realized there was a significant difference in my income and how much I paid in estimated taxes.

I made a lot more with both of my jobs in 2019. I had gotten a small raise with my customer service job and I had more hours on my contract with my data entry job. Obviously, both of those things are good and making more money is a good thing. And my estimated payments this past year were the lowest I paid since I started doing them correctly because of my lower income in 2018. So I made a lot more and pre-paid a lot less. Those combined meant I owed the $1000 form said I did. It all made sense once we figured that out.

And I do appreciate that Daphne took the time with me to figure out why I owed this year. Because entering my information was so quick, there was extra time in my appointment to do that investigating work. I’m sure that I could have figured it out on my own eventually, but it was nice to not have that question in my head when I left and feel more confident knowing what happened while I was still sitting there with someone who could explain it to me.

I will be paying the money I owe soon (I’ve got almost 2 months to pay it and I want to work on a few budgeting things first) and then I’ll be done with all my 2019 taxes. But I start paying my estimated taxes for 2020 in 2 months, so I’ll be doing that and working on making sure that I do everything I can to bring down how much I owe.

I left my appointment feeling good even though I do owe money. It’s something I expected and it didn’t upset me. But just like on my drive to getting my taxes done, my drive home was filled with seeing car accidents happen in front of me! I saw 2 very small fender benders that didn’t seem to have much damage. But when I was on the freeway close to my house, traffic stopped and the car in front of me didn’t see that. They hit the car in front of them at full speed and I was very lucky that I was able to slam on my brakes and avoid the cars. I guess it’s a good thing that I don’t follow other cars that closely. Both of the cars in that accident looked like they were totaled and there were pieces of the cars all over the freeway.

I have no idea how to connect the car accidents with getting my taxes done but seeing that many accidents made me think about how sometimes we might get a bit lazy with following the rules you should follow when driving. Sometimes we follow too close, don’t look in our mirrors enough, speed, or think that we have the right of way when we don’t. It was a good reminder to be a cautious driver just like I am cautious with so many other aspects of my life.

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Connecting Work And Dating (or Is My Job Affecting My Mental Health More Than I Realized)

Posted on February 20, 2020 | Comments Off on Connecting Work And Dating (or Is My Job Affecting My Mental Health More Than I Realized)

Even though I work from home, I have ways to communicate with my co-workers at my customer service job. We use an online chat system to assist customers, and we can also use it to chat with each other. This has been very helpful when we have a question from a customer that we don’t know the answer to or a customer is saying one of told them something that doesn’t seem right. But we often also chat socially with each other in our chat system since our job can be very lonely when it’s not busy and we are all working at our own homes alone.

I probably chat the most with my manager. We always are sharing funny and random things we find online. Sometimes that is what keeps me feeling sane on a day that is driving me crazy. And earlier this week, she sent me a funny meme about how when you apply for a job the hiring manager should be more upfront about what to expect with the job. Such as if you are willing to bend over backward for a customer or get them a manager immediately. And she and I were coming up with our own lines of what we would want to ask future employees doing our job.

Then she said something that hit me a lot harder than it probably should have. She joked that customers should say they are ok with hearing abuse from customers and still be polite and kind to them (we are told often that we are ruining someone’s life because a show is sold out or by enforcing our policies so we do get yelled at on a somewhat regular basis). And as soon as she wrote that, I realized that I do tolerate a lot at this job and I don’t let it affect how I treat a customer while I’m helping them. I don’t stand up for myself (nor can I really in a customer service job) and I have gotten very used to hearing some awful things. When I’m called a bitch on the phone by a customer, I don’t even flinch. It’s something I’m used to and almost expect at times.

But it got me wondering if tolerating this sort of inappropriate behavior at work is also making me tolerate bad behavior in life. More specifically, am I tolerating things I shouldn’t in dating?

That was a bit of a glass-shattering moment for me and I started thinking back at guys I have dated recently or chatted with on the apps. And I know that I have become more open-minded and am not as strict with dating anymore, which is a good thing. I have learned that not everything has to be a dealbreaker for me, sometimes it just needs to be a conversation to understand it more. But I shouldn’t tolerate anything just to be nice.

I know that there are plenty of times that I haven’t tolerated when a guy said something disgusting to me. If they are going to shame me for any part of me or my life, it’s no question that I want to unmatch with them. I don’t have to have someone be abusive toward me to get a date. But there are so many guys that I have realized are between being good guys and horrible guys that I probably shouldn’t have continued talking to.

There aren’t any hard and fast rules about what I am tolerating that I shouldn’t, but it’s making me reevaluate a lot of things. For example, if I am messaging someone and trying to set up plans, I don’t have to tolerate it if they don’t message me for a week and then ignore that we were discussing meeting up. I can bring up that I’m happy to chat with them more in person, but I should push for what I want to do. I know I don’t want to message with someone, I want to meet them and see if we click.

There is a bit of fear still in my mind about rejecting someone who could be my “last chance” (which I know isn’t true because if they aren’t right then they weren’t supposed to be my person). I hate that fear is still there, but I’ve realized that this feeling is so much more than just this fear. I want to be liked and not create conflict, but by doing that I am allowing behavior that I shouldn’t be ok with.

This isn’t going to be a quick fix where I learn how to stand up for myself more, but it’s something that I’m aware of now that I never thought about before. And I don’t want to swing to the other extreme and not tolerate anything that might be slightly different than what I thought. Being open-minded has been such a good thing for me and I don’t want to become closed-off. Finding balance is the key.

And yes, this all relates back to my word for this year. No wonder I felt so drawn to picking balance as my word.

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