Stuff and Things

Since it worked out that I was the last one to do a story post, I didn't want to do another one, so I'm just taking a free week this week. The rest of y'all can do whatever you want. :)

(Also, I wasn't sure if we were going to do Sarah's suggestion of listing off options for directions the story could take; if anyone wants that just let me know and I'll add some on my last post.)

It's actually been a while since our last free week, so I guess I do have some stuff to talk about. I finally started working. I got a job at the local community college working in their Employee Relations office, which deals with employee grievances, student complaints against employees, and bargaining with unions. I'm kind of disappointed about the whole thing, really. From what we talked about at the interview, they said it would be part photocopying/filing, part database work, and part research. I've been there slightly more than half the total time I'm hired for and so far it's been all photocopying/filing. I know that it makes sense to hire students to do that stuff, and I don't mind doing some of it, but after four straight weeks it's getting pretty old, and I'm upset that they misrepresented what the job was when they were hiring me. On the bright side, though, at least I'm getting paid, and have something to put on my resume, and have new people to be references. Not to mention a reason to leave the house on a regular basis.

Speaking of house, I'm going to be moving very soon, probably this weekend coming up. I'm reeeeeally excited about it. This is mostly because I'll be moving back in with my best friend/former roommate, who I've missed a lot this past year that we didn't live together, even though we did still hang out fairly regularly. Partly it's also because I don't really like two of the three people I currently live with, so I'm looking forward to getting away from them. It's not like we hate each other or anything, they just have some habits that I'm not crazy about... like slamming doors, or taking my food, or having their loud drunk friends over at 3 am, or not checking with the rest of the house before inviting someone to stay with us for two weeks. So, yeah, it will be nice to get out of here. Though I'm not really looking forward to the actual packing and moving and unpacking.

About a month ago now I volunteered at the Jazz Festival, which was so much fun. It's my favourite festival in the city, all the music is always so good and I love getting to be a part of it. Not to mention getting to see the shows for free in exchange for doing something as simple as selling tickets or emptying garbage cans. The two highlights of the festival for me were Mike Essoudry's Mash Potato Mashers, who put on a heck of a show, and Besh o droM, whose show ended up being the most massive dance party.

There was something else on my mental list of topics to discuss, but I seem to have forgotten what it was, so I guess I'm gonna wrap up there. Hope the rest of you are doing well!

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.

If you want to do stuff, you need a job

Well, we kind of forgot to pick a theme this week so here I am writing about stuff.

So for the past couple weeks I have been busy as a bee. Why? Because I need a job and my mother won't stay out of my hair until I have been employed.

My last job as a barista was a lucky hit, they were fresh out of baristas at the Stop&Shop and I just happened the walk in the door at the right time. This fact is forever getting rubbed in my face as I wander the Cape Cod Mall filling out application after application. I have gotten one interview, which ended in unemployment and a slew of "Don't call us, we'll call you" statement variations.

For a place that is a major tourist destination, no one seems to need much extra help. But I guess that's what we have Bulgarians for. (No offense to any Bulgarians, it's just something I noticed at Stop&Shop that half the employees are from Bulgaria).

My mother doesn't really seem to care for all the psychological and social progress I've made just by looking for a job. Nor does the universe for that matter as I still am jobless. Previously I couldn't even walk up to a desk and ask for a piece of paper, other people had to order food for me or walk into a store next to me. I could barely do anything buy myself and now that I have been going to therapy and have started taking anxiety meds, I'm driving all over the place, talking to people about jobs, going to interviews and filling out applications. I talk without hesitation to people I've never met. I even fended off some guy hitting on me without breaking down. How is that for progress?

But somebody in the universe doesn't seem to care.

Heck I'm trying to find ways to attract commissions on DA, I'm practicing art like crazy on and off the computer even if I'm not uploading it. I want to start uploading some high quality original work.

I was even looking at starting an Etsy store for bracelets I know how to make. Which only reminded me of the things I want to be able to spend money on. Like corset sewing patterns because I really love steampunk and the Victorian era and conventions.

And now I'm off to go fill out more job applications! Wish me luck guys! I need it.

Starting off the summer

So I'm going to be honest here, I'm pretty brain-dead at this point - I've spent all week in eight hour training sessions for my new job, and all my coherent skills are pretty worn out.

But! I would like to tell you about my new job :) I'm really excited about it - it's working with kids with autism to alter their behavior (teaching appropriate behaviors to replace inappropriate ones - i.e. hitting - and teaching life skills) with the overall goal of helping them become independent (as much as possible). In other words: helping people learn to function on their own and work and interact with others.

Probably sounds a bit dry, and there's certainly a whole lot of data taking and knowledge to learn, but I'm really excited to start work in the field. I don't know quite when that is yet (probably in a week or two), but I have four kids to work with, and a whole lot to learn. But I guess that keeps life interesting, so I don't already know everything.

Now, I realize that isn't particularly interesting for anyone else, so now I have a question for you guys:

What would you recommend for a summer reading list? I need to find some good books to read; I'm already working through Terry Pratchett's books, I've read all but Looking for Alaska of John's books, and I have Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series on my list, but I'm drawing up a blank otherwise.

What are you reading? What would you recommend?

This is what I do

Since we didn't pick a theme for this week and I haven't finished a punishment post yet, I'm just going to tell you gals about how much I love my job right now.

I'm working as a Youth Services Officer at a Service Canada Centre for Youth.  Basically that means that I help youth find jobs and make career decisions and important things like that.

One of my favourite parts of the job is doing presentations.  We go out into the local schools and present to classes about things like making resumes, interview skills, where to look for a job, career options, and workplace health and safety.  It's a lot of fun to interact with the younger students, and it's always nice to get out of the office for a little while.

I also really like how much freedom we have in this job.  There are certain things we have to do, and certain target numbers for presentations and clients and such that we're supposed to try to meet, but it's really up to us how we want to go about doing them.  So when it's nice out we can just decide that we want to go out and spend a few hours putting up flyers to advertise our services, and the other day we spent like three hours making fun posters to put up in the office, and the other day we had a meeting with the mayor just because we decided to call him up and ask if we could talk to him about youth issues in the community.

The most satisfying thing about this job, though, is when we feel as though we've actually really helped someone. After one of our presentations, a girl asked us about applying for Student Loans, because no one else had explained it to her, and it felt like we really helped her figure out what she needed to do.  Another girl asked us to help her find some information about small engine repair because her boyfriend was really good at it but wasn't sure it was a viable career option.  It's nice to feel like we're actually doing something good for the world!

So that's what I'm doing this summer.  It's wonderful and I love it.

What I've been doing and what I will be doing

Good evening Nerdsisters!

Today was the last day of my undergraduate degree.  It hasn't really sunk in yet, but at this point it feels weird more than anything else.  Actually at this point it mostly feels like any other semester where I'm just glad to have survived end of term madness and have a bit of a break.

I passed in my very last paper yesterday, and today I had to defend my honours thesis, which is probably the most stressful thing I've had to do in the entire four years, but I think it went okay.  A bunch of my friends and I went minigolfing to celebrate being done.  We are the coolest kids.  But it was super cool minigolf with black lights and everything is painted in glow-in-the-dark paint, so that has to count for something.

As much as I'm glad to be done for now, the next few days are going to be really hard in a completely different way.  It's time to say goodbye to people, some of them probably forever, and that's really tough.  One of my roommates moved out on Sunday, and I haven't been handling it very well.  We've known each other since we were six and been close friends since junior high, and now he's just... gone.  I know we'll see each other maybe once or twice a year because we'll both go home for Christmas and such for a while yet, but it's just so weird that I've seen him on a daily basis for most of the past 16 years, and now we're going to live in different provinces.  I think the very worst part, though, is that it's not like everyone leaves at the same time.  People trickle off one by one and every time I turn around someone else is leaving and breaking my heart all over again.

Well, that was a depressing paragraph.  On a more positive note, I'm moving back home for the summer, and I'm kind of excited.  I like Halifax, and I like being able to walk to everything and I like it in the summer when you can go to restaurants and sit on the patios and when you can just go out for ice cream or grab fish and chips from the chip truck on the way home from work and all those delightful summery city type things.  But I also really like being at home for the summer.  I like having a deck, and my dad built this amazing outdoor fire circle place last summer that I absolutely love, and I like driving on the highway with loud music, and more than anything else I like having easy access to beaches.  Also the lake that's insanely deep and has a raft and a rope swing and we always stay there way too late and stargaze from the raft.  Also camping.  So yeah.  Excited about going home.

I have the next week and a half off completely, and I'm going to spend it reading and catching up on TV and movies and finishing my screenplay for Script Frenzy and I've decided I'm going to take up running.  That should be, erm, interesting.  After that, I'm going to be working at a Service Canada Centre for Youth for the summer, which basically means that I'll be helping other people find summer jobs and make resumes and cover letters and all those fun things.  It's really different from any other job I've had before but I think it should be interesting and I'm excited to get started.  Also it's only a 14 week position, so I'll end up with almost a month off at the end of summer, and I'm really excited about that!

Anyway, I guess that's it for me... especially if I want to get this posted before midnight! :)