In which I land another job
Nov. 13th, 2016 11:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robotech_masterSo, here I am.
I seem to have fallen out of the habit of writing here except when I have major life changes. Which is kind of sad. So much of my life is going by without me bothering to chronicle it here. Though I suppose if you followed my Facebook and my Twitter you might have some better idea. Someday, I'll have to see if there's another of those multi-social-media archive tools that merges all your social media into a single "story." I used to use one for a while, can't remember the name, but then it went under.
The point is, I start a new job tomorrow.
Though maybe I should back up a little first. A couple months back, after my old apartments wanted me out so they could renovate the early-20th-century apartment I lived in, and wanted a co-signer on my new application to let me move back in afterward, my brother Alex managed to find a terrific 99-year-old condominium here in historic Irvington, Indianapolis. He put the money down to buy it, and I'm responsible for the condo fees and will pay him back over time once I get a real job.
It's got a basement, a finished attic, two floors in between (including a guest bedroom), a nice little kitchen with a gas stove, community heat from radiators, beautiful hardwood floors, and even has a "couch" Pokéstop/Ingress portal—that is, a portal I can hit pretty reliably from right here inside the apartment. (I just now punched the button on my Pokémon Go Plus to collect another three items.) There are a good dozen or so other portals/stops within easy walking distance. It's a short walk away from a bus stop that will take me west to downtown Indianapolis, and another that will take me east to just a few blocks from where my brother Aaron and family live.
There's a nice coffee shop just up the block, and another a block in the other direction. There's a friendly antique bookstore run by one of the other residents of the condo installation. There are a friendly brewpub and several great restaurants right along the street—including Jockamo Upper Crust, anointed the best pizza in the entire state of Indiana by Business Insider—and my favorite local breakfast chain, Lincoln Square Pancake House, is opening a location very soon. There's even a public library right next door to my condo (though due to fences, I have to walk halfway around the block to get there) with a BlueIndy station right next to it. This place has literally everything I could need in a home.
But one thing I need that isn't in a home is a good job. I've basically been unemployed for about a year and a half now, with the exception of the one-month temp job at Anthem a year ago and the two or three months David Rothman of TeleRead tried to give me a go as a full-time blogger. I spent the intervening time living off my credit cards, and this year unemployment insurance (after I maxed all three of my cards), while slowly getting more and more depressed as I had job interview after job interview that I thought at the time went remarkably well but was always passed over in favor of some more-qualified applicant.
Happily, when I was downtown a few weeks ago for other purposes, I decided on the spur of the moment to stop in and apply at the AppleOne temporary employment agency that had just opened—and immediately after I finished applying, they found me another temporary job at the very same Anthem location where I had worked last year.
The job is a five-month contract customer service call center position, answering questions about "insurance benefits, provider contracts, eligibility and claims." It pays decently for call center work—less than half what I made in tech writing, but twice as much as unemployment was giving me. I'm not especially thrilled about working call center again, but it's work I'm damned good at (if I do say so myself) and that'll just give me incentive to keep looking for tech writing work on the side, rather than settling.
And there really is a lot to like about the job. It's at the Anthem building, where I enjoyed working when I was there last year (it's got a great cafeteria) and which is very convenient to the new bus transit hub downtown. Indeed, it's basically just a 20 minute bus ride and a few minutes of walking away from me. The job is just answering questions about insurance benefits, which should (hopefully) be simple enough—it's got to be easier than talking people through the technical, drawn-out process of setting up their TVs and VCRs. And it's not sales, at least going by the job description they sent. Also, as a temp agency job it pays by the week, rather than every two weeks, which will give me a little more flexibility in terms of managing my income.
And, most importantly, I just filed for the last full week of unemployment benefits to which I'm entitled this year. So this job came in the absolute nick of time. Even if I can only stick it out for two months (and I stuck out my last call center position for over three years), it'll buy me enough time for my benefits to refresh for another year. And it'll let me get a start on paying back those credit cards, and maybe saving for some better transportation—my electric bike has developed a fault in the battery making it fundamentally useless for getting around now.
So, maybe things are looking up, and maybe if I keep applying for tech writing positions I'll eventually land another one. For now, I've got one last day of freedom to enjoy before I start working for a living again. I'm thinking I'll probably use it in cleaning up my apartment, maybe doing a little laundry, and worrying that I won't be able to sleep very well tonight.
I seem to have fallen out of the habit of writing here except when I have major life changes. Which is kind of sad. So much of my life is going by without me bothering to chronicle it here. Though I suppose if you followed my Facebook and my Twitter you might have some better idea. Someday, I'll have to see if there's another of those multi-social-media archive tools that merges all your social media into a single "story." I used to use one for a while, can't remember the name, but then it went under.
The point is, I start a new job tomorrow.
Though maybe I should back up a little first. A couple months back, after my old apartments wanted me out so they could renovate the early-20th-century apartment I lived in, and wanted a co-signer on my new application to let me move back in afterward, my brother Alex managed to find a terrific 99-year-old condominium here in historic Irvington, Indianapolis. He put the money down to buy it, and I'm responsible for the condo fees and will pay him back over time once I get a real job.
It's got a basement, a finished attic, two floors in between (including a guest bedroom), a nice little kitchen with a gas stove, community heat from radiators, beautiful hardwood floors, and even has a "couch" Pokéstop/Ingress portal—that is, a portal I can hit pretty reliably from right here inside the apartment. (I just now punched the button on my Pokémon Go Plus to collect another three items.) There are a good dozen or so other portals/stops within easy walking distance. It's a short walk away from a bus stop that will take me west to downtown Indianapolis, and another that will take me east to just a few blocks from where my brother Aaron and family live.
There's a nice coffee shop just up the block, and another a block in the other direction. There's a friendly antique bookstore run by one of the other residents of the condo installation. There are a friendly brewpub and several great restaurants right along the street—including Jockamo Upper Crust, anointed the best pizza in the entire state of Indiana by Business Insider—and my favorite local breakfast chain, Lincoln Square Pancake House, is opening a location very soon. There's even a public library right next door to my condo (though due to fences, I have to walk halfway around the block to get there) with a BlueIndy station right next to it. This place has literally everything I could need in a home.
But one thing I need that isn't in a home is a good job. I've basically been unemployed for about a year and a half now, with the exception of the one-month temp job at Anthem a year ago and the two or three months David Rothman of TeleRead tried to give me a go as a full-time blogger. I spent the intervening time living off my credit cards, and this year unemployment insurance (after I maxed all three of my cards), while slowly getting more and more depressed as I had job interview after job interview that I thought at the time went remarkably well but was always passed over in favor of some more-qualified applicant.
Happily, when I was downtown a few weeks ago for other purposes, I decided on the spur of the moment to stop in and apply at the AppleOne temporary employment agency that had just opened—and immediately after I finished applying, they found me another temporary job at the very same Anthem location where I had worked last year.
The job is a five-month contract customer service call center position, answering questions about "insurance benefits, provider contracts, eligibility and claims." It pays decently for call center work—less than half what I made in tech writing, but twice as much as unemployment was giving me. I'm not especially thrilled about working call center again, but it's work I'm damned good at (if I do say so myself) and that'll just give me incentive to keep looking for tech writing work on the side, rather than settling.
And there really is a lot to like about the job. It's at the Anthem building, where I enjoyed working when I was there last year (it's got a great cafeteria) and which is very convenient to the new bus transit hub downtown. Indeed, it's basically just a 20 minute bus ride and a few minutes of walking away from me. The job is just answering questions about insurance benefits, which should (hopefully) be simple enough—it's got to be easier than talking people through the technical, drawn-out process of setting up their TVs and VCRs. And it's not sales, at least going by the job description they sent. Also, as a temp agency job it pays by the week, rather than every two weeks, which will give me a little more flexibility in terms of managing my income.
And, most importantly, I just filed for the last full week of unemployment benefits to which I'm entitled this year. So this job came in the absolute nick of time. Even if I can only stick it out for two months (and I stuck out my last call center position for over three years), it'll buy me enough time for my benefits to refresh for another year. And it'll let me get a start on paying back those credit cards, and maybe saving for some better transportation—my electric bike has developed a fault in the battery making it fundamentally useless for getting around now.
So, maybe things are looking up, and maybe if I keep applying for tech writing positions I'll eventually land another one. For now, I've got one last day of freedom to enjoy before I start working for a living again. I'm thinking I'll probably use it in cleaning up my apartment, maybe doing a little laundry, and worrying that I won't be able to sleep very well tonight.
