Weekly Update
Just stuff...
I’ve been out of work for three weeks now. No new bites. No recruiters reaching out. Maybe I should take it more personally, but this seems to be a common story I see on LinkedIn. It’s a shitty job market. We’re in a recession, whether the powers that be admit or not. Every job I would be qualified for on LinkedIn has like 700 to 1,600 applicants. And every single full time gig I’ve gotten over the last 10 years has been through a recruiter.
I don’t know why I’m not freaking out more. I mean, I have my moments. But for some odd reason I feel calm that it will all work out. Not overnight. It never does for me. Everything in my life takes time, but eventually, I feel it will. In the meantime, I’ve had to get scrappy. Luckily, I have two spare bedrooms that I’m getting ready to rent out.
Bye my home office that I love, and bye my pretty guest room for visiting friends. But hey, it is what it is. I’m lucky I have these two safety valves. It’s part of the reason I bought this particular townhouse. If I can get two roommates then I can get my portion of the mortgage/HOA payment down to what I was paying when I was renting a studio a couple years ago.
Thing is, I haven’t lived with anyone besides a boyfriend or husband since like 2009. This will be an adjustment. But I need to do it. I’ll start with monthly rentals on AirBnb or Furnished Finder and see how that goes. The rooms will be furnished. I’m not ready to have someone just ‘move in’ with all their shit. Not yet. We’ll see how it goes.
Another reason I want to do this is to have a buffer down the line. Maybe I won’t need a 9 to 5 if I can make this work. It sucks the life out of me. Kills my spirit. I would think everyone hates 9 to 5, but I think some people actually like it. At the brand I just worked at, most of the designers would work more than eight hours a day. Not because they technically had to, but because they wanted to. They wanted to move up in the company. Move up in their career. I’m not one of those people. Never have been.
I’ve had to do it the last three years (after working freelance for about six years, but not making much money) because I needed the income. And I’m thankful for it. It’s the main reason I got my townhouse. I’m not opposed to it, if I need to do it. And I still, obviously, need the income, but I’m rethinking if 9 to 5 is still a necessity. I’m praying to God that I can find some part-time work that adds up. I can make my own hours. Go for a hike in the middle of the day. Not rush in the morning. Write every day. Work on my AI side hustle. That’s the dream, right?
I’ve been getting a few sales here and there from my Etsy store which has kept me busy. It’s the holidays. It’s hustle time. Typically I’ve been working till about 9 or 10 at night. However, I actually got up at 6:30 this morning to have time to journal and write. I usually sleep in till 7:30. I can’t seem to get in bed before 11 or midnight. But last night I got in bed at 10:30, one cat on each side of me.
Yesterday I cleaned from 9am to 5:30pm. Cleaned the downstairs, and then the garage. I needed to clean the garage so I can move my stuff in the spare bedrooms down there for storage. Anyway, I found a box of my old journals in the garage. I used to journal all the time in the 2010s. I used to get up fairly early, make tea, and write. It’s gotten away from me. But reading through some of them, I thought, there’s no reason why I can’t do this again. I have no job. What the hell. So that’s what I did. Right before I wrote this, I journaled. And I will work on some fiction right after I write this. Look at me guys, I’m a real writer again.
Fingers crossed that things pan out for you! And really happy to hear that you’re writing again.
I totally get what you mean about your feelings toward the 9 to 5. I like what I do a lot, but I don’t do it to get a management position or the like. When I worked as a journalist or freelanced, the hours were fewer and the pay was lower, but I had more time to write that first novel, for example. It’s a trade-off.