Tag Archives: work

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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Getting Back Into Podcasts (or Finding More Time Even When I’m Busier)

Posted on June 24, 2021 | Comments Off on Getting Back Into Podcasts (or Finding More Time Even When I’m Busier)

For a long time, podcasts have been the main thing that I listen to when I’m listening to something. When I used to drive to my day job, I listened to podcasts in the car. When I was driving around LA doing things, I listened to podcasts. Once I started working at home and wasn’t on the phone during my entire work shift, I had podcasts going while I worked and I paused the episode when I had to take a call or do something else that required my full attention. I’m not a big music person, so I rarely would listen to music instead of a podcast. The few times I did listen to music, it was due to me being out of episodes to listen to.

When I wasn’t working, even though I had all the time in my day, I wasn’t listening to podcasts that often. I don’t listen to them when I’m just sitting around my house, and I definitely don’t listen when I’m watching tv or reading. So even though I had more time than ever, my podcast listening went down. And when I wasn’t listening as much, I started to evaluate the podcasts I was subscribed to.

For a long time, I would listen to every episode of every podcast I was subscribed to. That became harder as I had more and more podcasts on my lists. It took me a while to be ok with deleting random episodes if they were interviewing a guest I wasn’t interested in or discussing a topic I didn’t care for. And it took even longer for me to start deleting shows as I realized I’m not enjoying them as much. But there is no reason for me to keep podcasts in my feed that I knew I wasn’t going to listen to. I became a bit more selective while I was out of work because I wasn’t listening as much. But most of the deleting happened before the pandemic.

Even when I was deleting shows I wasn’t listening to anymore, I always had a ton of podcasts in my feed. I can’t remember a time where I was subscribed to fewer than 20 shows. Some of them have episodes every day, some are sporadic. And there is a variety of lengths, with the shortest ones being around 5 minutes and the longest ones going an hour or two. And I could always pick and choose what I wanted to listen to during different tasks. Some are better for work and some are better for when I’m driving. I’ve always had fun picking out what I want to listen to for the next few hours.

Now, I’m getting more and more used to my work schedule. And I do have a lot of time that I’m not on the phone between all of my jobs that I can listen to podcasts again. I do still have times I need to have quiet to focus on a task, but so much work I do is a form of data entry, and having something to keep me entertained helps to pass the time. There are some podcasts that are easier to listen to at work than others, so there are some podcasts I have to carve time out in other parts of my day. But those tend to be the fiction podcasts, where I have to follow the story, and not the interview or news-related podcasts.

It’s crazy that somehow it feels like I have more time to listen to podcasts now that I actually have less free time in my day. But I’m glad I still enjoy podcasts and have something to keep me entertained while I work. I think working in silence would make the time go by slower and I do spend a lot of hours every day in front of my computer. Just like so many other parts of my life, this is another part that is finally getting back to the normal that I’m used to and it makes me happy.

 

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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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Fully Using My Work Time (or Having A Job Where I Feel Productive)

Posted on June 4, 2021 | Comments Off on Fully Using My Work Time (or Having A Job Where I Feel Productive)

Since graduating college, I’ve had a lot of jobs in many different fields. Overall, most of my jobs are in the customer service sector (even as a tour guide at a film studio), but the jobs themselves have varied. But most recently, I have mainly had direct customer service or data entry jobs.

Some of these jobs have been jobs where there is a lot of downtime because my responsibilities are mainly when a customer is reaching out. My box office job is like that. We can be extremely busy at times, but there are other times when we only have a handful of customers and several hours with nothing to do. That’s why my data entry job has been perfect for me. I have the ability to work that job between customers. And the data entry job is one where I have no downtime while I’m working, but it can also be done on my own schedule so I can do the work whenever I can fit it in.

When I started my new customer service job, I wasn’t sure if it would be a job where I was always busy or one where I had a lot of downtime. And it has changed from the time I started almost half a year ago until now. When I started, there was a lot more downtime because my focus was just on customer support so I was really only busy when we had customers reaching out to us. And that worked for me because I was new to the job and needed the extra time to keep learning the different processes and not feeling rushed or stressed when trying to help a customer. But as I’ve been at that job, things have been getting busier and busier.

Now, besides my regular work, I’ve been taking on some extra projects. I’ve been working on helping to organize certain work systems. I’ve been working on helping to create a training manual for other employees who aren’t as familiar with how the customer service team works as well as future customer service employees. I’ve built some systems to help us track clients and other things we need to track. I’m really being kept busy during the hours that I’m scheduled.

All of these things are being done during my work time, so I’m not doing anything outside of my work hours. But I’m now really busy for the hours I’m scheduled to work. And I know this is pretty normal for most people. Having a job like my box office job with a lot of downtime is the weird situation. And I know I’m lucky that I have had a job like that where I could do other work during work. But it’s also nice to have a job where I am busy during my work hours. I like feeling like I’ve accomplished a lot each day. I can see progress being made in the bigger projects and not just that I’m answering the same thing all day long (like at my box office job where I am always saying “the sold out show is sold out of tickets”). And I do still work some hours each week with my box office job where I do have that downtime. So there is a balance in my life.

As much as I complain sometimes about being overscheduled or too busy, it is nice to have a job that makes me busy. It helps to have a clear delineation between work time and my time. When I was mainly working my box office job, when I finished work I could stay on my computer doing a lot of the same things I was doing between customers. But with my customer service job, when I’m done with work I might still be on my computer to do other work, but there is a much clearer line between my work time and non-work time. And that’s something I have needed for a long time. Especially lately since I don’t have much planned in my life after work time each day.

Just like I always do when I write about being happy to be busy, I’m sure I’ll hit a time of burnout and being overwhelmed. And that is a bit more in my control because I can take more time on some of the extra work projects I’ve taken on so I don’t feel rushed or overwhelmed. And I also have gotten better about being an advocate for myself and speaking up when things are getting to be a bit much.

But at least for now, I’m so grateful to feel productive like I do now. This is a feeling that I haven’t had in a while and it’s just another thing that makes things feel a bit more normal and less like I’m isolated and not doing much with my life.

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A Working Memorial Day (or Just Having A Regular Monday)

Posted on June 2, 2021 | Comments Off on A Working Memorial Day (or Just Having A Regular Monday)

Last year, for Memorial Day, I had a virtual hangout with my friends. That was one of the first big virtual hangouts I had with my friends last year and I remember us thinking that we would hopefully be together by Halloween last year. It was also one of the first big traditions that I missed having since I usually am spending the day with my friends and enjoying a fun BBQ. But last year, we all understood why we couldn’t be together and I am still grateful that everyone in my friend group has been able to stay safe.

This year, I know some people were able to get together and the guidelines do say that vaccinated people can be together. But my friends and I have all been very cautious about things and I knew that we weren’t going to have a hangout this year. But that was ok with me since I had to work on what is a day off for so many people.

When I was only working my box office job, having Mondays off was a normal way of life. I never worked on Mondays so having a holiday on a Monday just felt normal to me. But now, I do work my other customer service job Monday-Friday (between all my jobs, I’m working Monday-Saturday with occasional Sundays). So having a Monday holiday would usually mean a day off. But at my customer service job, we also rotate who does holiday coverage.

Working on a holiday does mean extra pay, so that’s nice. And it’s only one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening. And I didn’t have to stress too much about getting all the work done because holiday work means that you look for the most urgent issues. There would likely be a lot of customers that I could wait to do until we reopened on Tuesday, but I also had the option to do some of the other work if I had the time. This was my first time doing the holiday work, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.

And I’m glad that I did it because I was able to get a lot of work done that I would not necessarily have had time to do on Tuesday. I did have some slightly urgent client issues that I immediately handled first when I logged in for the morning, but I was able to do other work to fill the rest of that hour. Then I had several hours where I could relax if I wanted to. And I spent that time getting a few things done around my house and reading before I had to log in for the evening. And somehow, I managed to almost complete all the work before I had to log out. I know that saved me at least 2 hours on Tuesday, and when I was working on Tuesday I had a lot more work to get done. So I never would have completed everything from the weekend in a single day. It was nice to have a day to get myself caught up and ready for the week.

And honestly, it was fine working on a holiday. Maybe I would have been a bit more upset if there was going to be an in-person hangout and I was going to miss my first chance to see my friends in person in over a year. And if there had been something planned, I’m sure I would have been able to figure something out so I didn’t miss out on it completely. But I’m glad that I didn’t have to add that stress into my day. And even though I had a working holiday day off, I was still able to relax a bit and enjoy my free time.

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Working On Speaking Up For Myself (or Finding A Balance Between Confident and Bossy)

Posted on April 30, 2021 | Comments Off on Working On Speaking Up For Myself (or Finding A Balance Between Confident and Bossy)

I think a lot of women were raised to be polite or demure. We aren’t supposed to make a lot of trouble for people and try to go with the flow. We are called bossy if we do speak up and that’s used as an insult. Men are called assertive and that’s a good thing, but women are bossy and it’s bad. I wasn’t raised to not speak up for myself, but I was raised to be kind and polite. And sometimes being kind and polite means being quiet because speaking up could cause issues. And this is a mindset that I’ve had for a long time even when I wanted to fight it.

A big place this has been a problem for me in the past has been in jobs. I know that having a job isn’t always a given. There are a lot of times that I know I’m lucky to have a job or opportunity and I don’t want to lose it. But this also means that I’ve tolerated a lot of bad workplaces in the past. There’s one job where I was harrassed by my manager, but I never spoke up because I was worried about being fired. I did speak to HR, but they didn’t seem to take it seriously. My manager would call me fat or make fun of my personal life in front of others and I just stayed quiet. There was another job where my boss was verbally abusive to all the employees. I was a receptionist and when I asked for a raise (which was a part of my contract) he screamed at me saying that I was an awful person for not appreciating what I had. The one time that I did speak up a bit was at one job that wanted me to take some continuing education classes and then I found out the only places I could take them that they would be ok with would be through their religious headquarters. But even then, I didn’t speak up that much. I just said that the job wasn’t a good fit for me and not that it was illegal for them to require me to pay for classes from a religious group.

And I think from my posts on here it’s clear that another place I have struggled with speaking up is with dating. I don’t think this one is as gendered, but I do think a lot of women want to be the cool girl who doesn’t push too hard. You don’t want to be the one to bring up where your relationship is going because you don’t want to seem like you are pushing for marriage and scare the guy off. I’m slowly starting to learn that if the guy is the right guy, discussing the tough stuff won’t scare them off. But I still am always worried that I will scare a guy off and for some reason they are the last person who will ever be interested in me. It doesn’t help that I have had some relationships end when I had the “what are we” conversation and another relationship end because a guy claimed he didn’t believe me enough when I said I wasn’t pushing for us to be in a relationship. But I also can look back at those past relationships and realize that even if I didn’t have that conversation, the relationship wouldn’t have lasted for other reasons.

But I’m noticing that I am getting better at speaking up lately.

I’ve spoken up at all of my jobs now to make sure that things are working out for me. I’ve spoken up about asking for a raise when it was in the job offer that one would be coming. I’ve spoken up about my schedule and what would work best for me. And I’ve spoken up about job responsibilities and what seems reasonable.

And with dating, even though it’s still tough to date during the pandemic, it is getting easier as things get safer. And that means I have more chances to speak up and advocate for myself. I’m not pushing hard for anything that feels unreasonable, but I am setting boundaries and expectations. For example, someone from my past reached out to me and I had some hesitation about trying things again with them. They had some issues with being reliable and being an infrequent texter. So I told them that if they wanted to start talking again, it had to be on the phone and not over text. And I’m holding them to that. They still are texting, but I am not responding most of the time. And when I do respond, I say the same thing again about how if they want to talk to me they need to call. I don’t have to just go with what they want when it’s not what I want. And if there is someone that I have talked to that I want to see again, I am getting more comfortable with being very upfront and asking them out again. I’m not waiting on them to ask me out. If I want to see them again, I am clear about that so they know where I stand.

I do still worry that sometimes I seem bossy or demanding, but I’m working through that more and more. And the more that I do speak up for myself and see the positive response I get in return, the more comfortable I feel doing this. I know that it’s not always going to work out for me and I do have stories of where it didn’t work, but more often it either works or opens up the conversation to discuss things more so I can make sure that I’m getting what I want out of life, work, and relationships.

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Having A Busier Routine Is Nice (or This Feels Even More Like Normal)

Posted on April 29, 2021 | Comments Off on Having A Busier Routine Is Nice (or This Feels Even More Like Normal)

Over the past year, I went from having one routine to another. And there were plenty of times that I had no routine that I had to follow. I tried to create my own routine when I had nothing happening. I kept up my workout routine and checked in with my work friends from my box office customer service job on a regular basis. But there was a lot of time that I spent doing nothing productive and I even got into some bad sleep habits with sleeping in later than I would like.

Once I started my new job, it was a bit of an adjustment to go from no schedule to a work schedule. Even though I don’t work full-time, I do have work 6 days a week (soon it will be 5 days a week). I had to make sure I was getting up on time to get my workout done before work. I had something that was making each day feel a bit different. I still struggled a bit with the adjustment, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. I think the fact that I worked on my sleep habits a bit before I started at the new job helped me a lot.

And I’ve only been adding more and more to my weekly schedule. I now work back at my old job 3 days a week (that may go up to 5 days soon, but it depends on a lot of factors). I have a pretty good routine going with how to balance my different jobs and make sure that I’m doing the correct work each day. And just last week, I added going into Orangetheory back into my schedule too.

Even though my workouts are the same days a week that I was doing them at home, it’s very different going into the studio to work out. First, my workout is now an hour long when it was closer to 30 minutes for a while. And because this workout is so familar to me, it feels really great to have it back as a regular part of my life. And I’m actually getting out of my house more often because of the workouts. I know that I will be leaving my house at least 4 days a week to work out, but it’s usually more often than that because of other things in my life.

And getting out of my house has been another nice routine that I have gained recently. While I have worked from home for several years, I never spent so much time in my house without getting out and doing something. And just getting into my car and driving the few mintues to my workout has been a really good thing for my mental health. It helps me not feel so alone. I feel like I’m a part of the world again. I feel like there is some forward motion in my life again. Just the simple routine of getting into my car and driving that short distance is something so familiar to me that makes me feel like my old life is coming back now. It’s a great feeling and yet another thing I didn’t realize how much I was craving until I started doing it again.

I do still have a lot of free time every day that I wish I could fill with more fun stuff. But I have a pretty great routine going for me right now for the first half of the day. I am getting up earlier than I used to (so I can make it to my workout) and most of the things I have to do every day are done by either noon or 3pm. So then I have time to relax or do something else after work. And just having an after work time is nice. I allows me to try to create a bit of a separation in my life, even if I can’t get out of my house every day.

And once things are fully open again and it’s safe to live our full lives again, the nice thing is that my work schedule isn’t going to change too much from what it is now. I will hopefully have some more hours with my box office job, but that will just mean that I work until 3pm every day instead of only some days. And my morning workout might slighly change time when they add in more classes, but it will be close to the time that they are now. So in a way, I’m already in my normal schedule for the future. I just get to focus on adding more and more things to my day as I can do them and add to my life and what I get to have fun doing.

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Back To An Old Job (or It Feels New and Familiar At The Same Time)

Posted on April 20, 2021 | Comments Off on Back To An Old Job (or It Feels New and Familiar At The Same Time)

For so many of us, this past year has been a crazy one for work. Some of my friends went from going into an office every day to working at home. Many of my friends lost their jobs and either have been working hard to find a new one or have made major adjustments in their life (like moving to where they could find work). My job situation has been a lot of ups and downs over the last year.

When the pandemic hit, neither of my jobs were affected at first. Then, my box office job cut back my hours. Then the box office job cut back the hours even more. And in August, my box office job had to let me go. I was still working my data entry job, but it wasn’t enough work to cover my expenses, so I had to balance how many hours I worked at that job with my unemployment (so I wouldn’t lose my unemployment). And I was very lucky that job was willing to work with me and understood the situation that I was in.

Then at the end of last year, I got my new job doing customer service with the social media company. I was so grateful to get that job and it’s been great working with them. Once I started working with them, I increased my hours with my data entry job and switched my job responsibilities to fit my skill set better. And more recently, my hours at my new job are being reduced a bit (partially due to something that was my choice and partially due to new employees being added to the schedule). But even with the reduced hours, I was still able to make everything work for me.

And then last week, I started back at my old box office job! I have known this was coming for a while, but I wasn’t sure of the exact start date. A lot of it depended on how safe it was to do shows in different locations. And when they asked if I wanted to come back, they asked me about my availability. I let them know what hours I could do around my other jobs since I don’t feel I could overlap my 2 customer service jobs. So they worked with that and asked me to start back with 2 weekday afternoons as well as the Saturday shift.

Going back to my box office job was a little odd. Things are familiar since I worked that job for so many years. But they are also different because some of the backend systems have changed and there are different rules to be aware of with new safety and health guidelines. I don’t feel like a total newbie at the job, but I had to ask questions about a lot of things that I knew before. Sometimes I had a complete blank on something simple, like accidentally forgetting the work phone number. But I know it’s just a matter of time before things come back to me and it’s easy again.

I know the long plan is for me to be working every afternoon plus on Saturdays, but that might take some time to get to that point. A lot of the locations aren’t open yet or can’t be open to full capacity. There are a few that could do that because they were doing the shows outdoors or for other reasons. But it hopefully will just be a matter of time before everything is up and running again. For now, I’m just glad to be back at work so I can ease into things as they get busier.

Even with working 3 jobs right now, my work schedule isn’t too overwhelming. I’m very lucky with the hours I work and how nicely my schedule fits together. And I’m grateful for any and all jobs I have. I would love to get myself into a better financial place so I don’t have to have the stress and worries I had before. There are some more expensive things that I’d like to be able to save for, like a new computer in the next year or so.

Every time something from before the pandemic is back in my life, I feel a bit more hopeful that things are finally normalizing and that this time will soon be in the past. And getting back to my old job, even if it’s not the same schedule as I worked before, is a big sign to me that we are getting back to normal again and I love that feeling.

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Working On A Work/Life Balance (or Almost Repeating A Recent Monthly Challenge)

Posted on April 1, 2021 | Comments Off on Working On A Work/Life Balance (or Almost Repeating A Recent Monthly Challenge)

I know I say something like this every year, but I can’t believe we are a quarter of the way through 2021 already! I hope that as the year progresses, things continue to get safer and soon the pandemic will be a thing of the past. And while the first quarter of the year wasn’t perfect, it was an improvement over a lot of last year.

And while things aren’t open up completely just yet and I’m still trying to be careful and cautious, my monthly challenge for last month was to work on planning more things that I can do. Being home and being isolate is good for health reasons, but my mental health suffered a lot. I know that the sacrifice was worth it because I didn’t get sick, but trying to plan ahead is important and gives me something to look forward to. I didn’t end up doing too much this past month to be a bit more social, but it was better than it has been before. Even just having time to hang out with friends has been good. And going to things like the Drive-In Drag show has made life much more interesting lately. But I’m still trying to find things to do to fill up my free time. I know that I might feel a bit better about doing things once I’m considered fully vaccinated (which is really only a few days away). I’m starting to take some more chances with being social, and I need to allow myself to do that while also being aware of what risks I’m taking.

And since I’m trying to find more fun things to do in my life, I need to work on really finding what time I have to use for free time. I’m not working a ton, but I’m working more than I have lately. I will be having a slight reduction of hours at one job, but I’ve increased my hours at my other and I might be starting back at my old customer service job this month! If I’m back at my old job, it won’t be the same hours I used to work. I will actually be working around the hours for my new customer service job. But that will make my hours seem very close to what they were before the pandemic (with the exception of working on Mondays now with the new job).

With all of my work being done from home and one job being completely on my own time, it’s really easy for me to feel like I’m working a lot longer than I really am. If I work from 9-3 as set hours for my customer service jobs, goof around on my computer for an hour or two, work on my blog post for the next day, and then do 2 hours for my last job, it can feel like I worked from 9am-7pm even though I didn’t. I want to find a clear delineation between work time and fun time. Even if fun time is just reading a book or watching tv, I want to feel like my time is mine and I am not trying to finish up some work stuff later.

So that’s exactly what my challenge is for this month. I want to find a way to separate that time. I want to be planning for what hours I’m really working and what hours I’m not. This is similar to the scheduling challenge I recently did, but I’m putting more of a focus on what hours I’m working more than an overall schedule. I need to figure out what my real work schedule is. I know it’s not as many hours as it seems because I am mixing up fun time and work time. I need to be in more of a habit of having my own personal office hours and being able to walk away when I’m done.

I will say that one thing that is working in my favor is that I only do work stuff on my computer. I do have the ability to do some of it on my phone or my iPad and I do have my work email on my phone (in case I need to be reached), but I don’t work unless I’m on my computer. Part of this is because it’s not easy to work on a smaller screen or not have a keyboard. But it’s also nice to know that other devices are not for work and that I can relax while I’m on them.

I will probably do a lot of the same stuff I did with my scheduling challenge. I’m still not sure if having a paper schedule is better than a digital one, but I’ve been playing around with it. And while I won’t know for sure if I’m going to start back at my old job just yet, I’m going to schedule as if I am (it’s only going to be 2 hours a day when I return). And if I’m done with work stuff early because I didn’t need that time, that’s fine. I’d rather have too much work time scheduled than not enough.

Hopefully, this will make things a bit better for me and I won’t feel like I never step away from work. I want to have a balance with my time. Even though I’m not filling up my free time with a lot right now, I know that more is coming back into my life. And I’m continuing to prepare for that time to be here!

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3 Months At My New Job (or Having Another Job Review)

Posted on March 24, 2021 | Comments Off on 3 Months At My New Job (or Having Another Job Review)

It’s been just over 3 months since I started my new customer service job. While I’m still learning things, I’m feeling more and more settled with work these days. At the beginning, it was a bit overwhelming with everything that I was trying to learn. But it did eventually sink in and now I’m feeling pretty comfortable with most things customers are asking me about.

I haven’t worked too many jobs that have set check-in points, but with this one there was. I had a check-in about a month in (which was a little bit past a month because of the timing of holidays) and that went really well. But that one felt a bit more casual than what I was going to be expecting with the 3-month review. I had no reason to be nervous or worried, but I always feel that way about work. It’s been a long time since I’ve been let go from a job for a reason other than the pandemic. I shouldn’t be worried about that, especially when my manager has been very open with communication about my job performance. She hasn’t been hiding things as she sees them. If I make a mistake or do something that could be better, she lets me know. That can be a little scary, but I appreciate it so I can improve on my performance. But even with all that, knowing I was having my 3-month review coming up made me worried that it was all going to change.

But as I think anyone could have guessed, that wasn’t the case. I had my review last week and it went pretty much how I expected it to go. And we covered quite a few things in the meeting.

The first thing was something that I asked for. For the past 3 months, I’ve been doing 2 different jobs at the company. I’ve been doing the customer service work as well as outbound engagement work. And while I could continue doing both, I knew I was experiencing burnout with the outbound engagement work as I have been doing that for other jobs now too. And when I was hired, they were very open to me saying if I was feeling overwhelmed by both jobs. So I wasn’t afraid to mention it to them. I’m going to still be doing that work until a replacement is hired, but it probably won’t be too long before that happens. I also wanted to take this part of my job off my plate because I’m hearing more news about when I might be asked back to my old customer service job. I won’t be doing both jobs at the same time, but I don’t know when I would have time for the outbound engagement work when I’m working with my old job again too.

We also went over what has been good and what could be better. And for the most part, things have been awesome. I have previously said how things might have been harder for me than for most new hires because I started and then had time off for the holidays. That made things tough on me. Also, because of the holidays, the typical schedule for how things go each month has been a bit different. So the way things went while I was in training isn’t exactly how they normally go. It’s not a bad thing, but something I’m very aware of. And the only other thing that could be better was something we were able to fix on my check-in call. There’s something within our system where we enter new clients that wasn’t working the way I thought it should. We had to copy and paste things from old forms when I thought there was a way to make a template. And there was a way to make that happen and it was fixed at that moment! It wasn’t a huge problem, but it would make us much more efficient when we work. And efficiency is important.

And at the end of the call, I was told that I would be getting a raise! It’s not a huge raise, but it’s not insignificant either. And having that raise is going to make things a bit easier as I won’t have as many hours of work when I’m not doing the outbound engagement work anymore. I’m not sure if my hours will increase in the future right now, but I’m open to the possibility. And I am very happy with this job and feel like it’s a great fit for me, so I’m hoping that I will continue to grow with them!

I don’t know when I have another check-in call like this one, but I also know that I can always reach out to someone if I’m having concerns or an issue. I don’t need to wait for an official check-in to see if something can be fixed or changed. And knowing that is a great feeling and something that I haven’t experienced with all the jobs I’ve had before.

I’m still so grateful for my friend who helped me get this job. It’s been better than I could have expected and I’m excited to see what will be in my future with the company.

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