rhymephile, posts by tag: work - LiveJournal

Today I officially earned the same amount I would have made working eight hours at minimum wage (at least here in Illinois) on my one book I published on Tuesday.

Tomorrow I'm crossing my fingers that I earn $88, which is what I made working 8 hours for that horrible monster at the the warehouse/packing/shipping job I had and got fired from last year.

If I do I'm going to cry.

Oh, and here's something I thought I would never say: Right now my book is in a category on Amazon where it is ranked higher than Stephen King.

I've been trying to respond to everyone's comments about what I posted the other day, but LJ is acting up. Another DDoS attack, probably, because I keep getting server timeouts.

Anyway! I'm going to respond to everyone as soon as I'm able. ♥

Hey there kids!

I hope you'll excuse the fact that I linked my Twitter with LJ, but honestly it's the best way to keep things updated and keep in touch with everyone (I always respond to messages here of course). It's the nature of the changing ways of LJ, I suppose.

This week I should be getting my letter from the state of Illinois telling me I won't be getting my unemployment payments because I got fired. The guy from the state who called to ask what happened sounded like he didn't give two shits about me or what I had to tell him about my old Nazi boss. I have the option to appeal, but that means a lawyer and the payments only amount to around $170 (or less) a week after the 14% of taxes are taken out. I could use the money, but honestly, I simply want to be DONE with this guy. Karma will catch up with him. He's a terrible person, and a sexist and racist (and probably homophobe, but I never did mention at work I have a legal partner just for that reason), and I want him out of my life forever. He'll get punished for all the things he said and the way he treated me and others. I'm moving on.

I saw a job I thought I could do in a listing this week, but it required "advanced HTML skills" which I don't have. If I were 10 years younger my college courses would have prepared me for the age of online editing, in which employers want you to be able to research, write, edit, design, code, troubleshoot, and market everything. And my problem is every job requires different software skills. One job wants you to know Drupal (a Content Management System, or CMS, which essentially allows you to make changes to a website through a single interface) while another only uses Wordpress. It's almost impossible to have all the skills they need, and when you emphasize the fact that you learned a previous CMS all on your own, it doesn't matter. In the current jobmarket, employers want you to drop right in and know everything the moment you're hired. There is no learning curve anymore because competition is so fierce.

In order to be more competitive, I've signed up for Continuing Education classes at a local college (well, local meaning about 40 minutes away). I'm going for a Web Maintenance and Design certificate. Here's what I have to take to attain that:

Requirements

1. Six required courses:

Introduction to HTML, LCT 0190
Introduction to Dreamweaver, LCT 0275
Intermediate HTML, LCT 0290, or Intermediate Dreamweaver, LCT 0375
Introduction to Cascading Style Sheets, LCT 0210
Introduction to JavaScript Programming, LCT 0193
Web Design and Usability Techniques, LCT 0201

2. One elective from the following list:

Intermediate HTML, LCT 0290
Intermediate Dreamweaver, LCT 0375
Intermediate Cascading Style Sheets, LCT 0215
Introduction to jQuery, LCT 0220
Introduction to Flash, LCT 0293
Introduction to Adobe Edge CC, LCT 0399
Introduction to WordPress, LCT 0590
Photoshop, LCT 8036

Plus a portfolio workshop.

I didn't do this last year because I didn't have the money. I'm taking six classes, and that is costing me around $1600. I'm still short two to actually get the certificate. But it's stuff I need to know. It can only help! Maybe now I can actually get a job? I hope? Then I probably need some marketing skills.

If you're counting, these are skills that three separate people would have had in the old days. I would write and edit the copy, then web design would make sure that copy is distributed to the site, and then marketing would handle email blasts and social media. Now they expect one person to do it all. *deep sigh*

And remember last year when I was talking about original writing? I'm still hoping to make that profitable. I just need to finish and upload the damn story to Amazon, and hope people buy it. Others have already gone this route and are making an insane amount of money. My problem is that I need to 1) actually sit down and write and 2) keep doing that so I build up a large catalogue. In this game, being prolific is more important than actually being good.

There you have it. Trying to move forward. I'm also going to be looking into finding someone to help with my poor self-esteem and self-confidence issues, and of course the constant depression I've been suffering since my career figuratively went into the toilet.

I wouldn't mind a little good luck for a change. I feel like I'm due.

WHY MUST THEY "IMPROVE" THINGS????

They went and changed LJ and I can't figure out my damn Friends list! The text is gray in the entry window here and I can barely read it. And then Firefox "improved" itself so I couldn't get my tabs back under the search bar, and I had to install an add-on to change it! GGGAAAHHHHHH I hate it!

There's no official updated LJ app for mobile either (at least on Android), which means I have to use some free version with ads, which I hate too.

While I'm on the subject, ooooh, I'm full of hate lately. My job sucks. My boss yelled at me last week and I called him out for being unprofessional, and we had a fight about it, specifically me telling him not to yell at me again. I also recorded the whole thing on my phone just in case he wanted to fire me so I would have proof in order to collect unemployment, but things are so bad and busy that he knew he needed to keep me and had to back down. Then he yelled at me again on Friday and I was thisclose to quitting. Both times were not my fault, btw -- I am totally overworked and it's impossible to get things done when he wants them. He's the type of guy who curses and slams things and can't control himself. He gets crazy, and frankly, I'm not putting up with it again. He yells at me one more time, I'm out. He can take his $11 an hour and shove it up his sexist, racist, cheap ass.

Last time I updated I was having trouble with my neck. Long story short, I have a herniated disc in my neck between the C5 and C6 vertebra that is bad enough that they want to do surgery. That means making an incision through the front of my neck, taking out the damaged disc, and using a titanium plate to connect the two vertebrae together. Jesus. Well, I wanted to get a second opinion, which I have yet to do. Once work slows down I can take a day off (which I don't get paid for) to go into Chicago and see someone. I don't really want surgery, but the disc is pressing against my spinal cord and who knows what else.

I'm exhausted by the end of the day and I miss everybody! I have to try to check in more often but generally I shower, eat, and go to bed. Blah.

Hope everyone here is doing well. Now if I can figure out how to read my damn Flist...

Luckily my deancas_xmas story hasn't been posted yet (the challenge is through AO3), which meant I took the opportunity today to add more to it so that I wouldn't be completely embarrassed when it went live. I did a marathon writing session the other weekend -- which I never should do again -- and it was missing a lot. Today I went back and edited stuff and added 1,757 words and a much better ending than the crap one I came up with.

The whole reason I signed up for the challenge is because I haven't written anything since I lost my job in 2010, when I wrote my Big Bang. It was so good to write something again!

Work is going well, although sometimes I have bad days when my loud Austrian boss gets cranky and shit rolls downhill. Then other days he sees me prepping 250 gift bags early for use at an upcoming trade show and says, "You are doing such a wonderful job. God, I love you!" LOL. I don't mind the work. I'm always busy, and although sometimes stressful, I feel needed and useful for the first time in a long time. On Friday I got a card from a client saying how impressed they were at the careful wrapping and presentation of the item. Fan mail!

I even bought myself a new phone! The Samsung Galaxy S4. I love my girlfriend 2.0! I haven't had a phone since my flip phone I got in 2009. It's nice finally moving into the smartphone generation.

I got my first check on Friday, a result of fruitful labor. Labor! So exciting. As I started in the middle of a pay week it's two days short, which means the next paycheck will be bigger and will allow me to guesstimate how much I'll actually be taking home every two weeks. I have to take my girlfriend out for a celebratory meal with all this cold hard cash I'm raking in.

I am having problems with my left arm/shoulder though. I know it's a result of all the lifting I've been doing in work. If I bend my arm for any length of time my fingers start to tingle, and sleeping has proven impossible for about a week now. I'm getting about two hours at a time before my arm wakes me up because of pain, or because it's tingling or feeling numb. I'm guessing there might be a pinched nerve somewhere, whether it's my shoulder or neck or elbow. Suffice it to say, my fingers are tingling in the time it took me to write this paragraph.

It's snowing again, for crying out loud. We already have about a foot on the ground, and they're forecasting another 3-6 by tomorrow. And then Monday the high temperature for the day will be -7. That's -21 for you Celsius fans. I have never been in weather that cold. Sure we had our 0 temps now and again back in New York/New Jersey, but a *negative* for the high? Never. I'm going to be bundling up like crazy. I'm getting more used to the really low temps out here in Chicagoland, but I'd rather not experience -20 with the wind chill as they're predicting.

That's all I'll leave you with, because I have to write my deancas_xmas challenge. Of course I waited until the last minute! It's due by midnight tomorrow. I guess I work better under pressure. We'll see, LOL.