I'm alive, promise!

I have been in a bit of a funk lately. I started a new job at a personal care company in August, with the intention of only working it part-time, and working my other job, court research, part-time. After working at the personal care company for a couple of weeks, my boss came to me and begged me, basically, to work for her full time. She had to fire a gal for insubordination and pure stupidity, and she really needed me full time. She even offered me more than what I was making before. I just couldn't resist.

So I quit my court research job, and I quit doing the mystery shops. I am now back to working 9-5 Monday through Friday, exactly where I was at before. And when I say before, I mean before I started with Career Step. I signed up with Career Step in Nov of 2004. I signed up with them because I wanted to work from home, so when my hubby and I had kids, I would be able to still work and bring in an income. My husband doesn't make enough to support the two of us, let alone enough to support children.

Eighteen months later, May of 2006, I had a huge awakening: I really don't like medical terminology. There were many people on the CS forums who loved nothing more than a great medical question that they could track the answer down for. People who actually cared what the difference was between arteries and veins. I have never had any desire to be a nurse, a doctor, and after the whole Career Step venture, I found out that I apparently don't have any desire to be a medical transcriptionist either.

Problem solved: I would do GENERAL transcription instead! To an outsider, it doesn't seem like the difference would be that huge, but take it from an insider: It's gigantic! They almost don't qualify as the same field. So I got a job at a couple of general transcription companies, and life continued on. Until I realized that I was actually quite miserable being a general transcriptionist. There I was, just me and a pair of headphones, listening over and over and over again to a bunch of people talking over each other, trying to make out what each person was saying. And for some recordings, I not only had to understand each person, I also had to identify them. From an audio recording, no visuals included.

I lasted a couple of months there, maybe (can't remember exact dates now) before I had to quit general transcription also. By this point, my poor hubby really should have been considered for sainthood. I was changing jobs like they were going out of style.

While I was doing the general transcription job, I got a very part-time job doing courthouse research. I decided to expand the counties that I went to, and I eventually started doing courthouse research and mystery shopping full-time, after I quit the GT job. I was also doing some virtual assistance work for the owner of the courthouse research company, Lark. I really loved Lark (she's awesome!) and the company, but there just weren't enough hours of available work to pay the bills, which was worrying me. Then I got a call from the owner of the personal care company, begging me to come work for her part-time. Not long after, I was working there full-time, and I had to quit the research job.

So I went from "Oh yeah, I'm going to work from home making lots of money as a medical transcriptionist" to "I'm working 9-5 Monday through Friday as a secretary." Although I hadn't sat down and thought about it, I realized in the middle of a phone call yesterday with my bro (hi David!) how much this was depressing me. I felt like a failure. I had spent thousands of dollars, literally, and 18 months of my life, all for nothing.

I wish I could say that I have gotten past all of this, and I no longer feel like a failure, but really, I am still struggling. At least I'm starting to crawl out of my cave again. As part of my job, I am required to answer phones, and the sheer volume of phone calls coming through the office is staggering. It's difficult to get anything else done. By time I get home, I am ready to set my cell phone on fire rather than talk on it. I used to love talking to people because when I was staying home and studying all day by myself, I needed to have social interaction. Now, I'm overwhelmed with the amount of social interaction I am having each day, and at one point, I had almost completely withdrawn myself from the world, into my little shell. I spent each night after work reading forums. Anyone who has known me through cyberspace won't be surprised that I have spent a lot of time reading forums. There has been points in the last two years where I would visit the Career Step forums or WAHM forums ten or twenty times a day. But back then, I couldn't help but post on every thread I read, mostly because I'm a know-it-all. ;-) But in the last couple of weeks, I have been reading for hours (three, four, five hours a night) and yet I wasn't posting but once a day, maybe. One quick post, if I was feeling really social.

Well you know what? I'm done guilting myself! Sometimes things work out for me, and sometimes they don't, and I REFUSE to guilt myself for the next year or twenty years for not having the right personality fit for medical transcription, general transcription, and all the rest of the stuff I got into! As of right now, no more hiding for hours at a time, trying to pretend the world doesn't exist. When the phone rings, heck, I might even answer it! Well, that might be going a bit far, but at least I'll think about it. :-P

Anyway, for all of the people who were wondering what hole I fell into, and if I was okay, now you know. I'm perfectly all right, just indulging myself in a pity party. I don't have time for any more pity parties--I've got too much to do!

With that note, I'm off to balance my checkbook. That is, sadly, on the to-do list. Hopefully I can find something on this list that doesn't include selling my unborn children to pay for heat. ;-)

Hava

PS Wow, this is so neat, and yet, a little scary at the same time. I had just finished writing this post and was about to post it, when I got an e-mail from Ken. Thank you Ken, for the e-mail. Anyway, Ken sent me a link for a thread on the Career Step forums, where a bunch of my friends from there were all posting, looking for me because they were worried. Hi you guys!!! << waving madly >> Y'all are so terrific. I don't know how I was so lucky to fall into such a fantastic group of people, but I'm really happy I did. Loves to you all!!!