today, part 2
That screamy post is worrying me being up there at the top, what with all the new readers coming in. (Or so I’m assuming.) So here’s a second one, just chattin’.
On Monday I went to my regular Paul class, and also asked the studio if they would put up one of the color flyers I made. I was told the owner would have to be consulted, naturally, but that there probably wasn’t an issue about it. I told Paul about losing my job and he said he was sorry. He said he wasn’t going to be in class the following Monday, and that he’d asked the owner if it was OK with her for one of his students, whom he believed could handle it, to teach instead, and she said that she’d be OK with that but she’d already gotten someone else to sub. So I narrowly missed an opportunity to teach my first class on Monday next (shortly after I get a dental procedure done, actually), but key information was revealed: the studio owner is OK with a noncertified someone teaching yoga there.
He mentioned that he knew there would be lots of sub opportunities in August, and said he’d pass on my name and number to the owner. I am very excited about this. I’d love to be able to make the extra $30 or whatever per class it’s going to make me in July, while I’m still employed, rather than after, but it’s still teaching experience and tremendous opportunities for me to get to know more folks in my nearby yoga community.
Did you guys know how hard it is to print up booklets with pages that go together one by one, without cutting them up and taping them back together? The answer is: really damn hard. I thought I understood, having put together a 15-page booklet on security in a prior job, but this was 55 pages of closely written text and it was completely different. I finally got the formatting done after about three hours of work, but I kept finding little errors that made me have to print out more and more new pages and it was making me insane. Now that I have a printed copy that is entirely correct, I am NEVER LETTING IT GO. I’m interested in doing more of these little chapbooks in the future, but I can’t bear the idea of a new task of formatting.
I told BF that it’s amazing how hard I work, how deeply in the zone I get, when I’m doing something that matters to me. It’s fairly easy to get immersed in certain parts of my 9-to-5 job, but it’s a lot easier to get thoroughly lost when I’m doing something I have a personal investment in. Like how I worked for 6 or 7 hours at a piece this weekend on putting together the website.
I’ve applied for 3 or 4 jobs already. For all that OG told me she’d help me as best she could, she has been entirely unhelpful so far. She hasn’t given me any names or numbers of people to call at firms or at legal staffing agencies, and the only firm she told me she thought was hiring was not hiring.
I’m still not sure what’s going to happen on August 1. I’m thinking of applying for a job at a little cafe down the street that seems hip and interesting, but I can’t possibly make enough money at that to live. I keep getting pulled towards that idea, though, because I want to have my options open in case I can teach here and there. I.e. instead of being firmly unavailable from morning till evening every weekday.
Calls to make. Thanks for indulging a second post today.
July 1, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Two posts a day? ILLEGAL!
Oh, wait…
(one of mine doesn’t really count!)
I guess my question about the cafe would be “how close to being able to live would it get you?” and “how flexible could they be with your potential teaching schedule?” Could be that both are very close, and it could be neither. Of course, I’ve never worked a waiting-type job and never worked at nights so I have no idea how those places generally work.
The answers are “not even close” and “hopefully very”. Right now I make over half of the income in our household, and we have exactly enough for our lifestyle. At a cafe job I would probably make a third of what I make now, which would not be enough for us to live for very long.
I’ve never waited tables, and am deeply afraid of it, but this place is sort of like an indie version of Starbucks with better food and occasional wait-service. And I really liked working at Starbucks. So it’s coming up in my mind. I’ve worked more non-9to5 jobs than I have office jobs, and switching around your schedule for what works has always been relatively easy for me.
July 2, 2009 at 6:54 pm
From what you’ve said, it sound like OG will simply say things to try to ease the tension in a situation. Thus, the comment about helping you find work. And also asking whether it was OK with you that you weren’t gonna get paid, like you had any say in the matter.
You have a point. I think she just makes a lot of promises that she doesn’t have the resources to keep, but I’d never thought about it the way you put it.
You didn’t say whether they paid you today or not. If not, I’d be very concerned about whether you were going to get paid at all before you leave. I’ve had several jobs where I ended up doing unpaid work, or had to take draconian measures to force payment. (The best example was one film I was helping edit, where the producers said that they weren’t going to be able to pay us one week. So we packed up the rough cut of the film and took it home with us. We told them that they could pay us and get the film back, or they could decide not to pay and get an unassembled film back.) The point is, the firm is obviously in financial trouble, else they wouldn’t be letting people go. You really have to be confrontational with them if they aren’t paying you for work you’ve already done. Even if you hate being confrontational.
Yes, they paid us.