Hello, Dave,
I received your booklet in the mail yesterday. I’m proud of myself, most of what you talk about as cost-cutting measures I’ve already done. Cable is off, for over two months now, and Netflix is on, but I didn’t even sign up for Netflix until just recently. I have had a no-contract phone for going on two years now in June, and I did these things while working at a “real” job, full-time, benefits, all those things that are supposed to be so wonderful. And I still am very short of funds all the time and so I need to find a way to make something work much better for me. Initially, I sent for the booklet thinking I need supplemental ways to add income to this job where I’ve been. That’s changed radically in the last 36 hours.
I am also wondering about the call that people buying the booklet were going to be able to participate in, that was detailed as part of the offer. The booklet just got here yesterday (I didn’t see it until 9 at night, due to my present job’s work hours, but I’ve read through most of it once, now) and now that I have it, I cannot find how to access the call. I would like to talk things over with you about this process, especially now.
I also applied a while back to your organization regarding the marketing position and I have not heard anything. I am still interested, particularly now, Between the Scott Peck email and yesterday’s events bringing the real issue into very sharp focus for me, I am going to give notice at my present job, probably two weeks notice on Monday, the 24th of March.
I know it will be hard, but presumably no harder than it’s been trying to fit me, the square peg, into their organization’s round holes, so to speak. And I know life is hard, so this is my way of accepting that, again, and another challenging change, again, and trying to become proactive and move forward through this.
One of the very important factors in my decision is my present job’s insistence that you go without sleep and deal with serious and often life and death situations in that state. I am too exhausted to do anything for my own home and life when I finally reach Saturday, and I live an hour away from the job. Actually, it’s an hour away if I am returning home from the office, not the fieldwork, which can be much further and of course, almost always starts late at night, after people who commute get home from work. They don’t see how lack of sleep relates to people not being able to handle the high stress of the job in general, it’s “just part of the job”. They claim they understand the relationship, but they do not respond to it in a way that is helpful to me in the daily job.
I see finally that I must respond to it and sooner rather than later, for my own health and well-being. It dawned on me in the last two weeks that I don’t even recognize myself in the person I’ve become, I have zero enthusiasm and can count on the fingers of one hand the events or times or days when I felt uplifted or elated at work or in my personal life, even when wonderful news came along my way, in the last three months, at least. I’m emotionally exhausted and less able to respond to joyful events, and I took enough workshops in my career to recognize that symptom of burnout. It makes little sense to me to be working so hard to get the folks I work with to change their unhealthy, counterproductive behaviors and habits and to constantly point out how crucial stability is in their lives, while placing myself in an increasingly and constant unstable lifestyle for the job, creating un-healthy living in one person (me) while spouting policies about how to live a healthier and more stable life to the people I am supposed to be helping and serving on the job. It feels increasingly like a form of insanity, no disrespect to persons with mental illness implied. It just feels so wrong to be talking up healthy change and making myself sick while I try to do it.
In the state I live in, that same job pays far less and involves using your personal automobile and your cell phone for just as much commuting/transporting to fieldwork, and it really doesn’t pay enough to offset those expenses effectively. I have been there, and tried that. Not to mention the personal risks involved with letting some of the seriously dangerous people you encounter on a daily basis know your car’s license plate number. The personal risks are adding up to another stress factor that is increasingly unacceptable to me. Having someone angrily berate you over the phone because you’re the only target they feel they can get to in their frustrating and very difficult situations, often accompanied by untreated mental illness among other very serious issues, or even having that person do that in a face to face setting, is one thing. I understand frustration, and don’t usually mind dealing with that frustration in others, if I can stay very concious of what the other person is going through and why they feel that way and keep my compassion in the front of the mix.
Being in their physical presence all alone late at night with no certainty that anyone in management will take your calls for help, and having them escalate into dangerous behavior, that’s another thing. Oh, sure, you can always call the police….and hope they get there before you become injured.
I also have struggled so hard financially even with the somewhat better paying job, farther away in New Jersey, that this is why I say I’m knocking my head against the wall, trying to find the doorknob and my way through the door, not having time for anything in life besides work and working overtime constantly, while still not being able to manage adequately financially. The commuting expenses and the personal expense of fear and stress and strain aren’t adding up to a successful situation.
That being said, I see working from home as being a good answer to the commuting and gas costs problem, and a help for the lack of sleep problem. I’ve wanted to find a way to help my house pay for itself and after all, I’ve always kept a computer and an Internet connection going, I want to use those to help support myself.
I am particularly interested in having my own schedule, working from home, and not commuting as far five days a week so as to cut out not $50 a week in gas, as you talk about in your booklet, but closer to $100 a week, at the rate of approximately $22 to $35 per fill-up three days a week for half a tank of gas, for a six-cylinder car. This is with usually buying the gas while I’m in New Jersey, where it can typically be an average of 12 to 14 cents cheaper a gallon.
I need a better way to take care of myself and pay my bills, without killing myself in the process.
I visualize myself working for your organization from home while doing a small dog-walking/pet-sitting job as well, possibly. I love animals and those options attracted me, as do the options to start writing on the Internet. I need to check out the other freelancing websites you list in your book, I tried one other one’s “free” membership, got charged anyway, stuck with it a while longer and then closed out, not helpful, but I want to try out another one.
About.com is another site where I want to try out your idea of becoming an “infopreneur”, once I identify some areas where I could contribute as an expert. I know that on a daily basis I tell people about things I’ve researched on my own out of just personal interest, almost as a hobby or avocation, and then I walk away after such a discussion with comments like “you really know a lot about this!” ringing in my ears, but I haven’t identified these interests as ways to earn money for my own keep. I like your ideas along those lines and will pusrsue them to figure out what I can do with them.
I also have been a very successful (in terms of gaining five day a week assignments) substitute teacher, and I would like to access some combination of these jobs to find the combo that keeps it together for me. I appreciate what you said about how you have several businesses going. I have done that many many times in my life, worked for many other businesses. I have always also put that down, in my own head and heart, as not being “normal”, not “stable”. I did not take notice that it frequently worked far better than “normal” nine-to-five type situations for me, I just did not put that together. I also discounted how happy I was subbing and doing some other things I have done, and not taken notice…wanting to do a job and being happy there is success, success isn’t just whether the job is “normal” or conventional, or provides benefits, or involves working for a big corporation or for state or county government. Those jobs have merit, of course, I’m talking about me discounting where I am happiest working because it isn’t those types of places, believing that working for myself or at more than one business is not as good as the other ways of working. Perhaps this seems obvious, and perhaps I seem dense for not getting it sooner, but I think it’s a re-realization, not a new one. I am looking through the eyes of other’s judgments when I do this, usually, I can’t give myself my own approval due to how it looks, or I perceive it looks, to others. That’s counter-intuitive, counter-productive and a real waste of time and energy. I want to get on with things. If it works for me, who cares what anyone else thinks? Many people who know me best applaud my way of working at those things, besides. It’s all in the perception and sometimes in judging things that do work, and aren’t broken, and don’t need to be fixed, negatively by some artificial yardstick. You are right about how you look at it making so much difference.
I would really, really like one of the businesses I work for to be mine or at least to be worked for from my home, that’s one of my dreams.
If of course follows, that I have also come to realize that one of the reasons I’m feeling this exhausted isn’t just the hours or the commuting, it’s the poor fit of the job for me, that I would most likely be much better able to deal with these factors if my morale about being there was not so low all the time. I’m just plain not happy, either. That’s the wall, admitting the job and the atmosphere at the organization is a poor fit for me is the door, I guess.
Anyway, I really am looking forward to talking to you.
I sent you an email regarding the marketing job, and I would like to have my phone call regarding the 161 ways to work from home. If I misunderstood about the phone call, I apologize, but I did not see a way to access the call, and now when you click on the link regarding the offer, it says it is expired. I didn’t realize the call part of the offer was going to expire, if it was and if if did, I thought that the dates of the offer’s expiration referred to the discounted price for the booklet. My email is available here, and I don’t want to put my phone number up here on the blog, but if you email me, I will call you and perhaps we can find a way to touch base, as I would greatly value your input, and an infusion of your positive energy and outlook. I need to associate with more positive thinkers and get the negative energy folks out of my life.Thanks.