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Tuesday, May 30, 2017

dream reunions

I had a dream about a birthday party for Chet, a friend of my parents who has a son and daughter the same age as me and my brother. He and his wife were lifelong friends of my parents from the time they were in Jaycees together as young adults. The party was at a large house like my family's home or his home. There were several people who I realized in the dream were already gone from this life like my parents and my maternal grandmother.  There were also guests who were neighbors and family of Chet who I had not met before. At some point during the dream I realized it was actually a going-away party being thrown for him and attended by both the living and the deceased.

Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Mammogram

Photogram  images seem very appropriate for the waiting room of an office that provides mammograms.

Sunday, May 21, 2017

Highly experienced. Bored. Broke.

I've spent 30 years at a career that is no longer necessary. I desperately need an entirely new skill set. 

Print is dead. Advertising is only for Account Executives with MBA's. Large publications are all produced in China now, even if the parent publishing company is here in the US. Most potential clients really do not see the difference between design that took several hours to perfect vs anything created with a MS Office template. I suppose it's just like the writer or journalist dilemma where everyone thinks they can do it for themselves.

Photography, as a profession, is dead - seems like everything can be made with a cell phone now to acceptable standards of the industry. Still images are dead, mostly. Animation (made in China) or video/film (still made in the USA) is the only desired way for producing images here for money. Everyone only wants recent graduates with degrees in Computer Science (preferably Masters, but in a pinch a Bachelors is acceptable). Oh, and there is no film industry I can find where I'm living now, anyway.

Yep. My industry is kaput and so are all of my career options. Now, I really wish I at least had friends here and hobbies to pursue and active neighbors or place I enjoyed hanging out at - if I had the money for it. 

If you can afford to, I say pursue your passion and just have fun and enjoy life. Unfortunately for me, I can not afford to remain idle but I can't find anyone to give me work here that I am qualified for. I can not manage the time to any classes to seek a new degree, which would take years anyway, and still keep my part-time retail job, which is the only work I can find here. Everything, even banks, only offer you 12 to 18 hours a week at minimum wage. 

Meanwhile, on a daily basis, MonsterMustDie tells how I need to find a way to make money. It always sounds he believes I'm just sitting around eating Bon Bons on the couch all day and not even trying. Everything on TV says I should have already found a way to create my own company. I should be on my third independent business venture by now. It does not help that I am not a salesperson with a perky-yet-aggressive personality. I wish I was perky. I am trying to will myself to be that. 


I did have one freelance job last month that I really enjoyed working on, for some business associates of MonsterMustDie and I have made friends with one couple who live in Greensboro and are of a very similar mind to us in most things. 

However...
That is all I have accomplished in three years here. Seems like everything has been two steps forward and three steps back since we relocated to North Carolina. Bad timing. Bad luck. That's all I can say. 

Saturday, May 06, 2017

Surprise

While I was at work today, someone left an empty Jack Daniels bottle in the fitting room. The "bathroom thief" also struck again for the fourth time this month.  She's a woman who removes all the tags and sensors from  items and leaves them in one of the tampon disposal bins in the restroom - usually in the handicapped stall.

Friday, May 05, 2017

still trying

The countdown is still on for the life of my last retail job here. I managed to sell one credit card application this week and was reminded that I needed to sell nine more to make my minimum goal for a week. I have not been entirely cut from the schedule yet but I expect this job to end soon just because I am not a good salesperson.

I have seen co-workers, on their cell phones in the break room, calling friends and family to ask them to come in to sign up for credit cards from them so I know I am not the only one whose job is being threatened by the pressure to sign more people up for the store credit cards. All because a study found that people will spend 30 percent more a year at stores they hold credit cards at.

I am thinking my next work attempt will be bars and restaurants. That way, I could learn more about the service industry and, hopefully, pick places very close to home to try to work at. If I am working for tips or below minimum wage, I need to be close enough that I don't have to spend much money or time to get to work. My car is getting older and I don't need to be too dependent on it if I'm not making enough money to maintain it.