Not unemployed, but looking for work

I feel a little bad posting about this, since I already have a job. But it is the accidental theme...

So I have a job. I quite like it, for the most part I like the company, and the pay is great - $19 an hour! Except it's only for about 17 hours a week, and I drive an hour each way without reimbursement to do it. So that part's not great.

I picked up an extra job at Target, thinking they needed people, but they also only give me 9 hours a week at minimum wage. I like getting to be around people my own age and socializing since I've been in this city for 6 months and have only made 1 new friend (it's hard making new friends without school, work, or other friends in common!). I'm not so happy with the inconsistency in management; some days my performance is "horrible" and I'm dinged for rules I was never told, other days the exact same work by others is fine and we just get the hell out of there after closing.

So far I have two solutions: 1) my cousin recommended the company that she works with, and I've applied with her as a reference. It cuts my commute in half, and while it would also be very part time, if I'm willing to sub for other tutors (I totally am!) I could get moved up to full time within a month. Even better, it's based in a school so instead of driving back and forth all over, unless I was assigned to work in kids' houses, I would be able to go to one place and stay there for the whole day. I don't know if I can overstate how awesome that is to me; having a freezer/microwave for my lunch, not having to worry about my purse getting stolen out of my car, oh it would be fantastic.

If that doesn't work out, I'm going to get more serious about doing microtasks. I really like Amazon Mechanical Turk, since some of the similar services I've tried feel really... ick. I can't quite put my finger on it. It feels weird to get paid to show someone else using the same service messed up and removing their $.10-$.15. I may also be being arrogant because in one of those places I applied to be an editor, had to sort through a horribly translated Chinese-to-English business "about me" page where it often wasn't even clear what they were trying to saying, and I had my account suspended and payment revoked by a snarky worker who pointed out that I let a spelling error slip through (outilize instead of utilize). Annnyway, rant aside, Mechanical Turk is pretty cool, and I like that they often have lots and lots of the same kind of tasks so I can get into a groove. It's not a living, but I'd be happy if it paid for one of my many tanks of gas each month.

I don't mean to sound whiny here, I know there are lots of people that don't have any job at all, but I'm tired of working 7 days a week between the two jobs to have under 30 hours and be entirely unable to move out of my sister's house while still paying several hundred dollars in rent and utilities. Oh, and stressing out about my car breaking down because of all the miles I've put on it and it being required to earn an income. Since I have nowhere near enough savings to buy a solid used car or enough monthly income to pay a monthly payment, every little sound (even my water bottle hitting the seat) worries me like crazy.

Ok, breathe... breathe. Sometimes I need to not think about these things.