Tag Archives: work

Unemployment Time (or I Hope This Will Help Me)

Posted on April 29, 2020 | Comments Off on Unemployment Time (or I Hope This Will Help Me)

Technically, I am not unemployed right now. But I have had my hours and income significantly cut back. For my customer service job, I am working about 10% of what I normally worked for less than 10% of what I normally make. And my other job doesn’t have enough work for me to make up the difference. I know that even making $50 a week is more than a lot of people, but I doubt there is anyone who can live on that little.

Fortunately, you can file for unemployment when you are underemployed as well. And I think I fit underemployment exactly in my current situation. It is a temporary situation, but again that’s exactly what unemployment is for. And while unemployment isn’t typically for someone self-employed (as I am with both my day jobs), there have been changes made recently during this time that allows self-employed people to file.

As soon as I knew that I would be eligible for unemployment, I felt a bit of relief. While I do have family that can help me when I’m not making money, I don’t like to have to rely on them. I want to be able to support myself. It’s a point of pride. And it’s not easy to always do it, but I will take steps I need to so I can try to make it happen.

In California, they weren’t accepting self-employed people in the unemployment system at first. They had to create a new section on how to file to fit that information. So while many of my friends have been filing for the past month, I wasn’t able to file until yesterday.

It’s been a long time since I’ve filed for unemployment. While I do remember a lot of things, there have also been things that have changed and it took me a bit of time to get everything done. I’m still not 100% sure I did it all right, but I know I will have a phone interview to discuss it coming up. So hopefully I can clarify anything that might be wrong. And it took twice as long to file as it should have because on the last page the site crashed. I knew there was a chance for it to happen since I was applying the first day that self-employed people could do so. But for some reason, I didn’t think to take screenshots of everything I filled out so I had it in case I needed it again. That was my mistake and when I did it all over for the second time, I made sure I took those screenshots.

I got a message saying that my application was successfully submitted. But I have no idea how long it will take for me to get my first check or to be approved. I know that things are taking longer than normal, which is to be expected with the number of people who are currently applying. I am lucky that right now I am not in a desperate place to get my first check. I do have savings I can use and my parents have said they could help me out. I will be ok. I might have a time where I get stressed and feel horrible that I have to ask for help, but I know I will get that help. And I know that the unemployment will kick in at some point and I will get the money from when I started being underemployed. The very first time I filed (about 13 years ago), I had an issue that prevented me from getting my checks for several months. But once it was settled, I got everything that I missed. And this will be the same since I have been underemployed for several weeks already and just couldn’t file until this week.

It was a bit of a frustrating procedure to file for a few reasons, but I also feel very lucky that I had so many friends who had already gone through it that could guide me and give me advice. Unemployment is usually a pretty lonely thing to go through, but with so many of us going through it we have a community that we can turn to for help. That was something I wasn’t expecting but made everything a little easier to deal with. I wasn’t embarrassed that I was filing because it seemed like almost everyone I know was doing the same. And those who already went through it were more than happy to share what they had learned. Hopefully from their help, my unemployment process will be a bit easier than theirs were.

I have no clue when the next steps with this process will happen, but at least I got the first step done. And eventually, I will be getting the help that I could use in this unusual time.

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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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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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Back To Back Work Fails (or Attempting To Be Productive)

Posted on February 19, 2020 | Comments Off on Back To Back Work Fails (or Attempting To Be Productive)

Considering how long I’ve been working from home, I’ve been pretty lucky with my work systems and not having too many issues. From time to time, there have been some glitches, but for the most part, I can log in and do my work when I need to. The only big issue I remember is when our website went down for an entire day for my customer service job.

But lately, I’ve had some more work issues and it’s frustrating since I want to be able to work. For my customer service job, it’s not as bad since I am paid for the hours I’m logged in, no matter what. So even if I can’t do any work, I still get paid. That’s nice, but it’s also frustrating when all I can tell customers is that I cannot help them and that I’m sorry. For my other job doing data entry and event updates online, I only get paid when I can work. And being able to work has been tough lately.

Some of the issues with being able to work have been my issue. I couldn’t work the data entry job last week because it was so busy with my customer service job. I usually do my work between my customers, but there was honestly no time between customers. I was on the phone with one customer and using our chat feature with a few others for almost the entire shift each day. We know that Valentine’s Day is usually one of the busiest times and I think it was made even busier because of it being on a Friday and the start of a long weekend. So I just didn’t have the time to work and I was exhausted by the end of my shift and didn’t want to sit at my computer any longer. I explained the situation to my manager at that job and she completely understood.

And I think part of the reason she understood was that there have been so many things preventing me from working that job that were out of my control. I’m helping to enter events on a new version of a website and that website wasn’t built until recently. Then, once it was done we couldn’t enter any events because it wouldn’t accept any way we could enter times in the form. That issue was finally corrected at the beginning of last week, but I wasn’t working last week due to the craziness with the customer service work. I finally got back to it on Monday, and now it looks like I can’t log in to enter events and there may be an issue with my access to the backend of the site. I’m still waiting for an answer on how I can do my work, but I really hope I can get back to it soon so I can get some hours in.

And if that wasn’t enough, yesterday I had to deal with the website for my customer service job being down. Fortunately, it was resolved within the first few hours of work, but it was still frustrating that whenever a customer called we weren’t able to tell them much. We couldn’t even tell them if there were shows on the nights they were asking about because we couldn’t see the schedule. Most customers were understanding when we said our website was down and we couldn’t tell them much, but there were a few that questioned how we could be a legit business if we couldn’t answer basic questions. I understand why they wondered about us, but it was hard to try to explain why we need our website to see information when they refused to believe that I didn’t have everything printed out and updated or something. I’m just glad that the issue didn’t take the entire day like it did last time and we were quickly able to get back to normal.

I guess these issues are things you encounter when you work from home. But I’ve been spoiled with not having issues that often. I am used to my work systems to be working exactly how I need them to work and I don’t have a lot of options when they aren’t working. I don’t have somewhere that I can go in to do my work or a workaround that allows me to bypass the issue. I’m stuck waiting for someone to fix what I need to be fixed and I don’t have any control over it. I guess it’s a good lesson in letting go and not freaking out, but because it’s my job and I depend on the money it’s not easy to stay calm.

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A Frustrating Morning At Work (or Working But Not Working)

Posted on January 15, 2020 | Comments Off on A Frustrating Morning At Work (or Working But Not Working)

I’ve written in the past about how sometimes during the slow times at work that I can get really bored. I hate saying that I’m bored at work because I know there are things I can do to be productive with my time. But it’s tough to spend 5 days a week stuck behind a computer when you don’t have anything to do. I’ve tried to find things to keep me busy and that helps. And whenever it’s the busy season and I’m going crazy with customers, I try to remind myself that I will miss having work to do when it gets slow again.

But yesterday, we had a very different type of slow day at work. We are still in our busy season so we have a ton of customers we need to help. But when we opened yesterday, we discovered that our website wasn’t working. And it wasn’t just the public website that was down, all websites that we use for work that aren’t public were down too. We pretty much had no way to do anything related to work. We found out later that this was due to a huge attack on our website host and so many websites were down.

We do have a quick reference sheet to look up some basic information for all of our locations, so we could answer things such as the price for tickets or the venue for each city we have a show in. And there are lots of standard policies that we don’t need the website for. So we could explain our age requirement, dress code, and date transfer policies. But so many of our customers were calling for things such as checking availability, changing entrees, or having an email confirmation resent. And we had no way to access anything we needed to do any of those things.

We have had some customers in the past that have gotten very upset with us when we couldn’t help them with something specific. For example, the box office cannot authorize any exceptions to company policy. If a customer is asking for one (such as bringing someone younger than our age requirement), we pass that on to the producers at that specific location so they can make that decision. Sometimes, customers don’t like that we are just passing information on, but we don’t have another option. And when the website was down, I was afraid that customers would be upset that we couldn’t help them.

It was sometimes funny when a customer would ask for one thing and they would understand that we couldn’t help them with that because our system was down so they asked for something else that would require the system to be up to help them. There were a few calls where the customer asked for 3 or 4 things and all I could do was keep saying that I couldn’t help with that because the website is down. And yes, there were a few customers upset that we weren’t helping them or we couldn’t tell them the exact time the website was running again. I really couldn’t say more than that our IT person was working on it and the website would be up as soon as possible. But sometimes a customer would ask if I thought that would be within 15 minutes or if it would be more like an hour. I just kept repeating that it would be as soon as possible.

Fortunately, that didn’t end up being the case most of the time. So many of the customers I spoke to understood that the website being down was out of my control and that I wasn’t doing it to make things tough on them. And they also understood that I couldn’t tell them when things would be back up and that I had no way to assist them with whatever they were asking of me. It was nice to see how many customers were polite and felt bad because they assumed we had a lot of customers upset that the website was down. I think after having some very difficult situations with customers that I needed this morning of good customers.

But I will say, this made my work pretty frustrating. We had so many voicemails that we needed to return that we couldn’t do because we didn’t want to call people back only to say we couldn’t assist them. We waited to return them until we actually could help. And I know that most of my customers understood why I couldn’t help them, but it was frustrating to not be able to answer some of the simplest questions we got. It was almost like this was a horrible mix of the boredom of the slow season with the chaos of the busy season. And I couldn’t do much about either.

I’m actually writing this post in the middle of my work shift. We’ve gone through half the shift with the system down and because it’s a big outage affecting more than just us, we have no clue when it will be back up. And it’s not any easier telling customers that I cannot help, but at least I’m better at saying it and I have more eloquent ways than I did right when it happened. But I’m just hoping that before today’s shift ends that things will be back up so we can actually do the work we were supposed to do several hours ago. If not, then hopefully it will be up as you are all reading this post and we can finally assist all of the customers from Tuesday.

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The Longest Week (or Having A Regular Work Week Again)

Posted on January 10, 2020 | Comments Off on The Longest Week (or Having A Regular Work Week Again)

The holidays are a bit odd with my job. Since so many holidays fall on a Monday and my work is Tuesday-Saturday, I don’t typically get days off. The only holidays we get off are the 4th of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas, and New Year’s Day. And it’s really bad when the 4th of July or the December holidays are on Sundays or Mondays since those are the days we don’t work. That happened in 2017.

I know I’m really lucky with my job and I’m incredibly grateful for it, but it was annoying when I didn’t feel like I got extra time off for the holidays. But this year was different. I got extra long weekends because the December holidays were on Tuesday/Wednesday. And I took advantage of having those and really enjoyed my time off. I didn’t do much, but I relaxed and spent some time catching up on life. I didn’t always know what day of the week it was and I occasionally mixed up what day or what time my shift was, but those moments were brief and didn’t really affect things too much.

Having 2 weeks in a row that had short work weeks were amazing. I felt like I had a real break from things and I was feeling refreshed and ready to start the year off right and work hard. And that feeling stayed there until this week happened.

This was the first full work week back since the holidays and it has felt like it lasted a month. I feel like this was because of a few different reasons. Obviously, having work each day felt weird when I had probably gotten used to having those short work weeks. I also haven’t been sleeping well so I’ve been tired in the mornings. And I haven’t had much I have had to do after work (I kept my schedule open on purpose) so I think my time has been blending together a bit. I usually try to step away from my computer as soon as I’m done with work, but the past few days I’ve had to stay on my computer for one reason or another. Sometimes I’ve been on my computer for another 3 or 4 hours after my work shift ended. That is just too long to be sitting behind a computer and I am to blame for those scheduling issues. But it also makes it feel like my workday lasts a lot longer and I don’t have as much of a break between one shift ending and another shift starting.

It only took 2 weeks to get used to a shorter workweek, so hopefully, it will only take 2 weeks to get used to my normal schedule again. So that would mean that next week or the week after I shouldn’t be feeling like the week is lasting longer than normal. And I’m trying to do a lot better with my sleep now and I know that it will take a few days for that to be felt in my body. Having to stay on my computer might not be something I can completely resolve, but it’s something I am aware of and trying to figure out what solutions I can find.

I will say that it does make me feel a bit better that I’m not alone in this feeling. Lots of my friends have mentioned how this week has felt really long and they couldn’t believe we were in only the second week of the month. I think because I’m so aware of how I’m feeling that sometimes I think I’m the only one going through something and I stress a bit that I need to fix it. But hearing that other people are going through the same thing right now makes me feel like maybe this is just something random that is affecting a lot of people and not something I need to work too hard to fix. But I still want to find solutions on my own because I know some things affect me longer than they affect others.

At least I’ve got my weekend coming up. I don’t mind working on Saturdays because they are shorter shifts and I don’t feel like I really spent a weekend day working. The only thing it really affects is that I don’t usually go out late on a Friday night since I have to be up so early on Saturdays. But that is definitely a normal feeling for me and I’m looking forward to my weekend and having some relaxing time. I don’t have much planned yet, but I hopefully will figure out something fun to do. And that fun should get me ready for next week’s work and I’m hoping that next week feels like a normal week and not an endless week.

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Default ThumbnailScheduling Life (or Trying To Remember What Day Of The Week It Is) Default ThumbnailLow Key Labor Day (or Just A Regular Weekend) Default ThumbnailEnd Of Another Week (or Almost Back To Work) Default ThumbnailLast Regular Workout Week Of 2019 (or Still Pushing Through) Default ThumbnailWork Work Work (or Another Very Part Time Job) Default ThumbnailWork Lunches (or Prepping for The Week)

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Feeling Useful Feels Good (or I Need To Be Productive)

Posted on December 18, 2019 | Comments Off on Feeling Useful Feels Good (or I Need To Be Productive)

I’ve written a lot about being bored or not being productive in my life. I have had a lot of issues with being productive while working since I don’t have to focus on my work all the time. I have done some things to cure my boredom that I know are very unproductive like watching a lot of random things on YouTube. It’s not easy for me to find things to do between customers at work because they need to be things that are easy to stop doing and pick back up where I left off.

That’s why the other job I’ve been doing has been good for me. It’s a lot of data entry or online searching so it’s easy to put the browser window that I’m working on behind my customer service browser when I have a customer. And I’ve been able to do that work most days in the past week or so because there was a new task to start on. This contract hasn’t been as steady as my past ones were because the work is a bit in flux. But I did just sign a new contract to extend this one for another few months (there were several delays in my work and there was no way to finish the hours by the end of the year).

Obviously, having my other job to do it most than just a good way to spend my time between my customers because I do need that income, but I love that it helps me stay focused on doing good things when I’m stuck at my computer for so many hours a day. And for both the income and the work, I hope that there will be another contract for me to sign when the extension for this current contract is up.

But I also have discovered that being productive is something I crave other times of the day. When I’m dealing with a lot of pain and nausea (like I am right now), I don’t really leave my house much. If there’s something I have to go to, I’ll do it. But if I can push something to another day I usually will. All I want to do is stay home and be in comfortable clothes and get through the discomfort the best I can. And when there is a lot of tv to catch up on, I admit that I spend a lot of that time at home watching things on my DVR. But when there aren’t new episodes to watch, I don’t want to be mindlessly going through different streaming services to find something to entertain me.

It’s not easy to find something to keep me busy when I feel as badly as I do right now, but whenever I find something it really does improve my mood. If someone asks me to help them with research online or another task I can do, I feel so accomplished when it’s completed. I don’t forget about how I feel, but it can be a good distraction. And when it’s something that I can pause when the pain and nausea get too bad to focus, even better.

Lately, I’ve been doing lots of random tasks around my house during that downtime. I have gotten a lot of organizing done (I still have a lot to do, but it’s a work in progress). And the holiday cards that I ordered a while ago finally arrived at my house (they were lost in shipping and had to be resent to me which delayed them a lot). So I have about 50 cards to write and address. I can’t put off getting stamps for them as long as I’d like since I need them to be in the mail soon, but I have to finish doing the cards before I go to the post office. So writing those will likely be my afternoon and evening work for today and tomorrow.

I won’t have much busywork to do next week and I have even more downtime because of the holiday schedule. But I think when it’s the holidays I can be lazy and not feel as bad about it. I do want to have a few tasks on my to-do list that I can work on just in case I feel the need to get something done. And if I don’t get everything done, then I can just work on them between customers when I don’t have the other job to do or after work if I don’t have anything planned.

I’m not going to wish that I was busier because I know that can backfire. But it is nice to know that I’m being helpful or productive when I know that it’s easy to be lazy. And that feeling of accomplishment when I’m not feeling overwhelmed is really great and I want to find more ways to get to that point.

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Default ThumbnailFeeling A Bit More Luck (or Hopefully This Was Just A Bad Phase) Default ThumbnailGearing Up For Another Temp Job (or At Least It’s More Work) Default ThumbnailProductive One Way And Slacking In Another (or Working On Finding Time) Default ThumbnailFeeling Weird About Blogging Other Stuff (or Posting Silly Posts Just Feels Wrong) Default ThumbnailSuper Productive and Super Lazy (or A Balance Over 2 Days) Default ThumbnailBack To Back Work Fails (or Attempting To Be Productive)

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Another Observer Opportunity (or Watching The Local Board)

Posted on November 7, 2019 | Comments Off on Another Observer Opportunity (or Watching The Local Board)

When I went to the SAG-AFTRA local board meeting recently, one of the things on the agenda was when the next local board meeting would be. I made sure I wrote that date down because I wanted to make sure I didn’t accidentally schedule something else that evening. I really am trying to make an effort to go to all the board meetings that I can. First, because it will help keep me informed about what is going on in the union. But also because I want to get an idea of what my responsibilities would be like if I get elected to the local board in the future. Even though I was prepared to be on the local board if I was elected this time, I’m glad I’m getting this time now to truly understand what it would require and the work I would be doing.

Many of my friends are thinking the same way as I am with wanting to go to observe to understand the union more. So when we had the local board meeting this week, several of my friends were signed up to go as well. There were so many members signed up to be observers that they list was full and some people couldn’t request a spot ahead of time. They also have a walk-up list, but with so many people signed up, it was unlikely that everyone would get into the boardroom. There is an overflow room for people to watch the board meeting on a closed-circuit tv, so everyone who showed up did have a chance to observe.

I got to the union early because I wanted to guarantee I got a seat inside the room. Only the first 40 or so people to check-in get a ticket that allows them in the room. I was the 3rd or 4th person in line, so I felt a bit of relief when the check-in started. I knew I was going to be in the room and I could relax. They also provide some food for us, so once I was checked in I got some of the pizza and hung out with my friends in the holding room for observers.

I’m now getting used to the routine of observing meetings, so when it was about time to go inside we had a quick review of the rules and policies. Mainly, as observers, we cannot speak or contribute to the meeting. We just observe. We can take notes, but we cannot take photos, videos, or audio recordings. Since I had friends there as well, I knew that I didn’t have to stress out as much about taking notes since we could share. And the information I heard wasn’t confidential to members, so I could also ask people I knew on the local board to explain something or clarify something I heard.

I ended up sitting in the same seat I was in last time, which was good. I like being in the last row since sitting for too long can make my hips hurt. This way, I could get up to stretch if needed without disturbing too many people. And because the last meeting went long, I was prepared for this meeting to do the same.

But I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly things moved during the meeting. There were disagreements and things to debate, but much less than the last meeting. And there weren’t as many things on the agenda so even if they were taking time to get through something, it wasn’t delaying a lot of other things. Also, having fewer things on the agenda made things easier for me to follow. I was so prepared for things to run long that when there was a motion to conclude the meeting I was thinking that I was hearing it wrong. I thought maybe it was to conclude discussion for one thing and not the entire meeting. But the meeting ended almost an hour early after accomplishing everything that was on the agenda! It was a very nice surprise for everyone in the room.

Since we ended early, I went to a restaurant next to the union with a few people from my slate to hang out and discuss a few things. But most of our talk was about silly things and it was nice to get a chance to do that. I’m usually in work mode and serious when I’m with those people, but this gave us an opportunity to relax and have fun. I had a few moments where I was thinking “how is this my life?” because it’s still so crazy to me that these amazing actors are my peers and that they wanted to hang out with me. But it also gave me a confidence boost and made me think that I am in the right place and pursuing the right career.

The next board meeting is next month, and it’s already on my calendar. Unless something crazy happens with my schedule, I’ll be signing up to be an observer again and trying to make sure I get into the room. I will keep encouraging other members to do the same because I feel like this is so important to do and not enough members take advantage of this chance.

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Default ThumbnailAnother Union Meeting (or Getting Into The Routine Of Things) Default ThumbnailMy First Official SAG-AFTRA Duty (or Learning What’s In Store) Default ThumbnailObserving The Local Board Meeting (or The Beginning Of My Second Term As A Delegate) Default ThumbnailThe End Of The SAG-AFTRA Elections (or Being An Observer) Default ThumbnailSAG-AFTRA Local Meeting (or Coming To The End Of My Delegate Term) Default ThumbnailObserving a Board Meeting (or Finding A New Goal)

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A Little Job Update (or It Was Silly To Be Scared)

Posted on October 31, 2019 | Comments Off on A Little Job Update (or It Was Silly To Be Scared)

Even though I’ve had the same jobs for a while now, I still am always terrified that I will be fired. I don’t know if I will ever get over that feeling. I wish I could, but there is just something in my head that makes me think that I’m always a moment away from being fired. I feel much more secure in my customer service job, but I think that’s because it is a much more consistent job and I have constant communication with my manager (but when my boss needs to talk to me, it scares me so much).

With my research/data entry job, I have a little reason to be nervous. I shouldn’t be scared that I will be randomly fired, but I never know if I’ll have another contract. It started out much more stable, but now I am on temporary contracts when they can have me working. I’ve been lucky this year with the contracts I was put on, but it’s still a bit scary.

The one thing that helped me with the fear with that job was that I knew my boss well. She and I met in a workout and then I worked for her with another company. When she had an opening with the company she moved to, she hired me. So I didn’t have to worry too much about what my boss felt about me since I knew her well and knew that she would talk to me if there were any issues. For example, there was an issue a while back with my work on the website not showing up. It turned out that there was an issue with how the data was being saved and we were able to fix it. To her, it might have looked like I wasn’t working. But she was able to ask me about it and I could clear up an issue before she felt like I shouldn’t be working for her.

That boss has now left that company. She was offered an amazing opportunity with another company in another state. I’m sad she left, but I’m so happy for her because I know this is really great for her and her family. And she will be working with me a bit still because she is going to be put on contracts as I have been. So even though she won’t be my boss, I can still ask for help from her from time to time.

I’m currently on a new contract for that job, and it’s doing work that I’ve never done before. This is more about website design work and eventually some writing/blogging work. When I was offered the contract, there wasn’t a lot known about specifics because the website was still being worked on. There were ideas of what I would be doing, but not the date that work would start. Until I was able to start that work, I was told there were a few random tasks I could help with to get some hours. So I started working on those and when I finished I was waiting for what was next.

I realized last week that a lot of time had passed and I didn’t have an update on any new work. And because I was working with a different boss, I was terrified to email her to check in. I finally had the courage to do it and didn’t hear anything back. I was so scared that because I hadn’t been able to work that they were ending my contract or something. But I decided to try to stay positive and sent a follow-up email a few days after that just checking in.

I’m so glad I stayed calm and positive because my second follow-up had an almost immediate response. My first email hadn’t been received and that’s why I didn’t get a response. And my boss completely understood why I hadn’t been working because things had been delayed on her end. We had a big catch up call last week to figure out some things and I have been able to work a few hours here and there since then.

My lack of hours was not because I was being flakey or slacking on work. It was just about not having assignments to work on. And I’m so grateful that my boss understood that and didn’t assume something else about me. I hate that my mind was telling me that she would be thinking something bad about me and that was making me worry about sending an email. I know how silly it is that I think like that, but I have come to accept that I might feel like that forever with work.

Fortunately, now I feel like I can email my boss more and check in without fear of her thinking I’m not working hard enough or enough hours. I hope that it will make working on this contract easier and hopefully she will be happy enough with my work to put me on another contract after this one ends. It’s a little scary that my old boss isn’t there because I know she pushed for me to get work there. But I just need to work on making sure I have my new boss in my corner so she will think of me as a hard worker and someone that she wants to have working as often as they can hire me.

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Default ThumbnailGearing Up For Another Temp Job (or At Least It’s More Work) Default ThumbnailAnother Time A Friend Found Me A Job (or It Really Is About Who Knows You) Default ThumbnailDay Job News (or Things Are Getting Better) Default ThumbnailTime To Make A Game Plan (or Guess I’ll Be Doing Some Job Hunting) Default ThumbnailBeing On Hold With A Job (or Not Quite A Quitter) Default ThumbnailA Job Hunting Update (or Making Sure I Don’t Repeat My Financial Year Again)

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