Tag Archives: unemployed

Adjusting To Being Unemployed

Posted on by
11

I have to admit that it was a huge shock when I found out that I had lost my job in mid February, not only because I needed to be employed to ensure I had enough money to cover my living expenses, but because this was without a doubt the worst time in my working career to be looking for a job.   The recession in the USA was starting to hit hard, few companies were (and still are) hiring new people in the IT field, and so for the first week or so I was pretty much in panic mode.

For those of you who are new to my blog, I hope that you enjoy the articles that Debbie and I write and will subscribe to them, either via RSS feed or email.  We are also both on Twitter (Tony / Debbie) and you can follow us there.   Our lives are complicated, with me living in South Florida while Debbie lives in the South of England.  I am divorced with 2 young girls who live 30 miles from me, and child support for them takes a good proportion of my income every month, so obviously losing my job came as a great shock.

For the first few weeks at least, despite my alarm having been turned off, I would still wake up at 6:30am automatically, which really frustrated me as I didn’t need to.  I also wasn’t sleeping too well, waking frequently during the night, and with working to update web sites, my resume and to get my affairs in order until late every night, I was exhausted.  Finally I managed to get into a better sleeping pattern as things settled down.

With the prospect of getting another job in the field that I work in (I am a Senior Analyst/Programmer specialising in JDE World Software – an integrated system now owned by Oracle that is used by larger corporations) being slim, I decided that one thing I ought to do while unemployed is to try and do my best to make a living online.   I figured that if I can earn more money online than I have been doing, and ideally earn enough to make a living, then the future would look a lot brighter.   IT used to be a great field to work in, but in the last 10-15 years the rate of pay has actually decreased, and most companies don’t offer good benefits and definitely no job security these days.  Anything I can do, especially as I am getting older, to get out of this dying field, is a good thing.

Well after a few weeks I managed to sleep better, and right now I can guarantee to more or less wake up between 7:30am and 8am most days, sometimes even later.  The problem now of course for me is how to be productive.  I am unemployed right!  So I have all day to do what I need to do.  Well it’s really not as easy as it sounds.   Let me give you a run down of a typical day for me…

7:30am-8am – Wake up.

8am – Check email, web stats, minor web updates, shower, breakfast.

9:30am – Get some work done.

11am – Debbie comes home from work (4pm in England).  Chat on webcam for a while, work on web tasks together.

12:30pm – Feeling peckish, grab a bite to eat.

1:30pm – Take a sauna/steam and have a swim.

2:30pm – Chat with Debbie.

3pm – Get some work done.

5pm: Goodnight chat with Debbie (10pm in England).

6pm – Grab dinner.

6:30pm – Get some work done.

8pm – Take a walk.

9pm – Watch tv / get work done.

11pm – Off to bed.

As you can see, I get some work done, but in short bursts, and in reality I barely have more than an hour for each burst before I am distracted by something else, like the phone ringing, or new emails coming in.   I am determined to try to get fit and lose weight, so my daily sauna/swim is very important to me, especially as I am living in a community in South Florida where we have a nice pool and sauna, plus the weather is on my side most of the time.  So I don’t want to give that up.  I also need to chat with Debbie, as it’s important to us both, and it’s really hard to be so far apart for months at a time.

The solution is to try and do something to reorganize my days so that I can make better use of them.  I started today, not too successfully, but this is my new plan…

7am – Get up early, quick look at email etc.

7:30am – Take a walk.  I live in a community built around a golf course with several lakes, and walking around the block is 2 1/4 miles.  I also live on the 7th floor of a condo block, and walking down the stairs, around the lake, back up the stairs took 36 minutes this morning, one of my fastest times.

8:30am – Shower and breakfast.  A nice cool shower to clean off, then a healthy breakfast, either something like Raisin Bran or Oatmeal with a Banana, and Orange or Grapefruit Juice.

9am – Get some work done.

12am – Chat with Debbie.  Both of us waiting until 5pm over there in England to chat, so we both get more done.

1:30pm – Lunch, Sauna and Swim.

2:30pm – Back to work.

5pm – Goodnight chat with Debbie.

The evening I can’t do much about, since I want to take my evening walk, and I go with Tim, who I rent from.  It’s a lot nicer walking with someone, and I time the walk to fit in with his schedule.  Fortunately we now have the ability to record television shows automatically, which is wonderful as it allows me to still watch my favorite shows, but frees me from having to worry about when they are on.

The best thing about getting up early and taking a walk is that I feel really energised afterwards.  Doing this early is best in Florida as it soon warms up down here, but it also means that I have worked out by 8:30am and an ready to go and get stuck into my tasks for the day, instead of feeling sluggish having just got up and not done anything.

As far as looking for a job, these days jobs in IT are mostly advertised on the internet, and so I have various searches activated on sites like Monster.com and Careerbuilder.com which send me emails of any new jobs.  Also having my resume active on these sites, the headhunters come to me when they have any openings, but inlike other times when I have been looking for work, this time there are precious few jobs going for people with my qualifications.  In the last week I have found 3 jobs – one in Pennsylvania, one in Texas, and today one in Los Angeles, today’s being the only one that I would say I am well qualified for, and none in any location that I am happy to relocate to.   I don’t see things improving any time soon.

My working day consists of writing articles on here, The Laughline and Squidoo, plus promoting the same on Tagfoot and Stumbleupon, as well as other sites.   As well as posting links, I am actively researching for new ways to promote and cross link my sites, to improve traffic and also affiliate earnings.   Some days it’s good, but the last week traffic has really slowed down unfortunately, and I don’t know why.

If you have any comments on how to better organise my time, or on how you organise your time I would be pleased to hear from you.  Also if you have any suggestions for better marketing my blogs to get better traffic I would like to hear.  I am always open to cross linking to other related sites, and there are many other blogs out there that I would be pleased to swap links with.  Don’t forget that you can use the Share button at the end of this article to subscribe to our feed, and if you can Stumble, Digg or Twitter this I would be grateful.

Six Weeks And Counting

Posted on by
13

frustrated tired sleepySo far I have been out of work for six weeks as of yesterday, and although I am trying to settle down into a routine, trying to generate work and income online, and trying to spend my time fruitfully, I find myself being incredibly busy yet have trouble achieving much of what I want to.   It’s extremely frustrating.

It took the best part of a month for me to settle down to waking up at a decent time instead of 6:30am,  and this is one of My Pet Peeves with being out of work.  It’s the same when you are working, you struggle to get up during the week, but then at the weekend you wake early, when it would be so nice just to have a lie in for a change.

Well my best intentions for the month of March were to start writing a lot of articles on different sites, to investigate creating Squidoo lenses to sell, to identify photographs and other works of mine that I can sell, and a few more things.   What have I achieved?  Not even 10% of this!

The problem is that although there is so much that I want to do, at the same time there is so much to be done.

Taxes

Take for example last week.   I had to get my taxes completed before leaving for England this weekend (I will get to this later), because although they have to be filed by 15th April, I am not going to be here.   Preparing the information took some time, although I don’t know why I bothered because the accountant said that if the details do not exceed the standard amount then they won’t make a difference.  I just know I ended up with a huge tax bill (see my previous posting).   So I spent several days trying to find out more about paying my taxes in installments, or to see if I can make an offer to pay less.    The information on the IRS web sites doesn’t really help me, and it’s often confusing,  so I tried calling, and I am on the phone for up to 30 minutes, holding while some crackly music is playing.  Meantime you can’t do anything, because you have to be ready for the call.  When you do speak to someone, they more or less just direct you to the web site, so back to square one…

Frustration Zombie Disorder

Are you one of these people like me, where when there is a lot to do and you are frustrated, you just want to go to sleep, or turn into a vegetable?  The more frustrated and stressed I get, the more I can just sit there and stare into space like a zombie, my brain racing at 100 miles per hour, but getting nothing done.  The past two weeks have just been a classic case, especially when I found out about having to owe so much money to the tax man.

Naturalization

My other time consuming and worrying task has been my upcoming interview with the Department Of Homeland Security regarding my US Citizenship application.  No it’s not the INS (Immigration And Naturalization Service) any more, immigration comes under Homeland Security.   I finally got used to getting letters from them.  They sent me into panic mode at first, because not only could they contain bad news, they could also be about something else.  You always worry – well I do… even though I have been a good citizen (well resident anyhow)…

For my interview, which was Monday morning, I knew that I would have to answer 6 out of a maximum of 10 questions correctly, these being on US government, history and geography.  I was rather concerned, since I am not into politics, and in England I bet very few people could tell you much about the political system, or how many of this or that law there were, what year they were passed etc.  Here it’s different.  You are expected to know the year that the Constitution was written, how many Amendments there are, who was president during WWI and WWII etc.  The political questions were harder for me, although they do give you a book with the questions so you can prepare yourself.     Then there are what I call the silly questions, just basic things that most people ought to know.   For example, how many stars are there on the US flag and what do they stand  for?   Ditto how many stripes…   Well I know this, but I wonder how many people know anything about the Union Jack, what it is comprised of and what this means?  Probably not many.

As part of my interview I also had to pass tests that proved I could read and write English.  First I had to read the sentence “What state has the most people?”.  Then I had to write the answer, which was dictated to me… “California has the most people”.  Phew – I passed that one…  I bet if they asked a lot of people something about Mississippi they would get it wrong!     Gawd – the Welsh would have the perfect answer to stopping immigration…  Question: “What is the longest place name in Wales?  Answer (which you would have to write): “Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyll-llantysiliogogogoch is the longest place name in Wales”.  Could YOU do it I wonder?

My interview was supposed to be at 9:15am Monday morning.  I arrived 35 minutes early (they said to not arrive more than 30 minutes early), I went through the scanners (same as going through at the airport, except I didn’t have to take my shoes off), had to go back to the car to leave my cell phone behind, because it has a camera, even though I don’t have the ability to take photos off the camera…  Well I waited, waited, waited some more… Lots of people got seen, then came out again.  More people arrived, quite a lot arrived up to an hour after me and got seen first, so I was naturally getting quite frustrated and concerned.  Of course I didn’t take my watch, since I have the time on my cell phone, which is now in the car, and there is no clock in the place.   I finally got called in for my interview, which took all of 10 minutes.  I passed the test – only got 1 question wrong, well half wrong…  Phew!  I got back to the car to find that the whole process took 2 hours and 20 minutes, 10 minutes of which were the interview.

However, as usual things don’t go completely straightforward for me.  I have to provide evidence that I am paying child support.  They didn’t ask me to bring that with me, something to do with Florida law, they aren’t allowed to ask, but they need it anyhow.   So I left rather relieved, but frustrated that I now have something else to do, and I am off to England on Saturday.   I thought the form would arrive in weeks, but it arrived yesterday, amazingly fast for a change.  Well now I have to try to provide this before I go.  That would save a month off the processing time since I will be away for 3 weeks.   It does however mean that today and tomorrow I have to get the paperwork ready and to no doubt wait hours more tomorrow to get the paperwork to them, when I would prefer to be packing my bags.

I Hope They Don’t Search My Bag

Although Debbie now has her visa (see previous posts for the long long saga of the visa etc), it’s cheaper for me to fly to England than for her to fly here, and with me being out of work I can go for longer, as she only has 2 weeks off work (school holidays).   So I am set to fly out on Saturday morning for almost 3 weeks in England.

Of course, since we had hoped that Debbie would be spending a year here with me as of last Summer, she has been bringing more and more clothes with her, and I now have a closet full.  Since it’s unlikely she will be coming back in May and can’t come during the summer, I am going to be bringing as many of her clothes back to the UK with me.   At the same time, the last 2 trips I made to the UK, I brought clothes to leave there, so I don’t need to bring many things over with me this time.   Problem is, if they decide to search my bag, which has never happened before, but you know Murphy’s Law…  they are going to find a suitcase filled with women’s clothing!   “Er, ah, I can explain officer…”   I might work up a light sweat on arrival in England… Shouldn’t be a problem though I am sure…  There must be dozens of cross-dressers going through immigration every day…  Just rather embarrassing since I’m not one..

Well back to my seemingly endless list of things to do…   So much to write about, but like everything else, so little time…

The Unemployed In The USA Suffer

Posted on by
8

It’s tough losing your job at any time, but as you get older and your skills maybe are older it gets harder to get another job, harder to retrain, and like so many others you could be in a position where the cost of being unemployed could affect the future of your family, not just yourself.

Take someone like myself, who has been unemployed for just over two weeks.  I have two months of severance pay coming, but with the economy in the state that it is in, chances of finding another job are slim.  Not only that, every time I look for another job, there are fewer positions open for my skills.  Companies don’t want to train you, they want to hire someone who has all the knowledge to do the job required.  So, unless you can gain those new skills, you can’t get one of those positions.

Problem is that this is a Catch-22 situation.  You could take a course and learn something new, but before taking the course you should really know something about the system.  Having taken the course, you need to work with the system to put your learning to use and to fully understand what you learned.  Without a job you can’t do either, and few employers will take on someone who has taken a class and nothing more.  Classes are expensive too!

Unemployment benefit would be enough to pay my rent and for me to scrape by, however I have two young daughters who are in Catholic school because the local middle schools are awful.  Literally the reputation of every single middle and high school in the area is really bad, so the last thing I want to do is to take them out of private school, since that would affect their future.  This is just one example of the way being unemployed affects the whole family.

Health care is another factor.   Most white collar workers get health care provided through the company that they work for, with the company paying 80% of the cost.  However, once you lose your job, your health care is only paid up to the end of the month, and after that you have the option of paying COBRA, basically retaining the same health care plan, but covering the full cost yourself.  With the company I was working for, I would now have to pay 102% of the total cost per month, which would be in excess of $500.  That’s just for ME!  If I had to pay for the whole family, it would be just under $1,000 a month to provide health insurance.

Now isn’t this just crazy?  At the time you really need cheap health care, because you have no money coming in, you have to either pay more than the total unemployment benefit ofr the month, or go without any medical coverage at all.  Doesn’t this seem just backwards?

In the UK at least there is the National Health Service (known as the NHS), which is funded through National Insurance payments (the equivalent of Social Security).  Health care (apart from Dental Care) is completely FREE, so you can go see a doctor, get surgery etc, without having to pay a penny.   Of course this does come at a price, since the NHS is under funded, and so if you need treatment and it’s not deemed to be urgent, you could be on the waiting list for a year before anything is done, but at least it’s FREE.   Many companies in the UK do offer a subsidised health care plan similar to the USA (BUPA), but when you need to fall back in hard times, the NHS is there at least.

This past two weeks I have had to catch up on all the things that I did not do while I was employer, getting my eyesight checked, a full checkup, and having a dental checkup too.

Although my vision exam was free and covered by my medical plan, there was a deductible and of course they only pay so much towards frames, so that set me back over $100 for a pair of glasses (my first – not bad to get to 54 without having glasses, although I did really need these 5 years ago!).

Then the doctor.  My exam was free, but other things I would have liked to get done would have cost, so I had to fore-go those.

Finally the dentist.  Well my exam was free, however my dental plan only pays 80% of the cost of fillings, and only 50% of the cost of crowns, so again having to get a tooth I broke two years ago crowned cost me close to $400.   Then I had a cleaning, which is supposed to be covered but not fully.  The hygienist  found two pockets of decay, and recommended I have this antibiotic injected to help treat them.  Of course the dental insurance doesn’t cover this (surprise), so there I am for the cleaning and treatment another $180 out of pocket.    I get home and look up information about the product, Arestin, and find all over the Internet articles where dentist have recommended this unnecessarily just to get extra money, and supposedly the effect it has is possibly not worth the money.  Oh great!  I could have saved myself $150 of what I have left to help see me through until I can earn again.

Well one thing you have to do when you are unemployed is to tighten your belt and to budget hard to make the money last.  I have been doing this for a while now as it is, and this I think I will leave to another article.

So what is your opinion of the health care industry in the USA?  I know President Obama is trying to change things, but I would be interested to know your opinion on what should and could be done, and also I would be interested to hear about your experiences with the health care industry.

Thirteen Days And Counting

Posted on by
1

It’s now thirteen days since I lost my job and I have been incredibly busy ever since, trying to organise my life and to promote my work more online.

Since my health insurance runs out in less than a week I have been trying to get the essentials sorted out while I can, since I can’t afford insurance without having a full time job.

Last week I went to the Dentist and Doctor, entered the time for today’s Dental appointment into my Google Calendar for 9:30am.  Went there, signed in, sat for 5 minutes reading a magazine, and they called me up to the counter.  “Anthony, your appointment isn’t until 1pm”.   Boy did I feel stupid, but I have so many different threads running through my head all the time, it’s hard to get it all right.

So having mis-timed that, I went to the hardware store to get a couple of things, then to the Farmers Market to do some shopping, as the fruit and vegetables there are usually better and cheaper than going to the grocery store.    While I was there Debbie called, and FINALLY she had got her visa approved for travel to the USA.  So now after 4 months of waiting she will be able ot travel here again.  Of course now I might not have the money for flights… Life just keeps throwing us those curveballs…  I won’t say any more, because I know Debbie will want to add things in her own words tomorrow.

Went back to the dentist at 1pm, had a tooth drilled down and impressions fitted for a crown.  I think he spent a good hour drilling and filing.  My jaw was starting to ache, and as always when I go to the dentist, I drool!  No idea why, but my mouth just fills with saliva when I have dental work done, and if they don’t watch out it just runs everywhere.   Well finally they got my impression for the final crown done, and also a temporary one made and fitted.  I can still taste it though, usually takes days for the taste to go away.

The afternoon was pretty much shot by the time I got home, so I chatted with Debbie on the webcam for a while, then after she went to bed I made a good stir fry with some green onions, boc choy, spices, ginger soy sauce, and egg fried brown rice.  Not my best effort, but pretty healthy at least.  I love to cook and have rarely had the chance in the past, but now with the weather being a bit cooler I am enjoying cooking lots of veggies.  I can’t justify the cost of meat, so that is a real treat for me, but I was always brought up to eat plenty of vegetables and these days I can easily make a meal of them, cooking them in plenty of different combinations and ways, often pretty spicy.

This evening I have been working solidly on blogs, updating my links on Stumbleupon, adding a new page for Tiger Direct Special Offers to my Poddys web site and adding it to the Sidebar here as well.  Tiger Direct have always had good prices in my opinion, and I have shopped there a lot in the past.

Initially I thought that there was nothing on television tonight, and after half heartedly watching an episode of Stargate SG-1 and then a Star Trek Next Generation episode, I looked at the guide and saw that on the Palladia channel (part of MTV) there was a 2007 concert with Heart performing Dreamboat Annie and more.  This was good, I saw them in 2007 on the tour, and they closed with Love Reign Over Me from The Who‘s album Quadrophenia, one of my all time favourites.   That was followed by Genesis in Rome from their 2008 tour which was an amazing concert.   I only saw them once, and they were my favourite band from the time I first heard Foxtrot back in 1972.  I saw them at Wembley Stadium in 1987 and they were incredible.  Even now it’s the best concert I have been to.

So I am caught up on Stumbleupon, most of my email, added all my lenses to a new directory today, but still have so much to do.

Oh yes, before I forget, I updated several of my lenses as well…

I added a new video to my Religious Jokes lens.  This is a stand up routine by Rowan Atkinson (Blackadder, Mr, Bean) welcoming new arrivals to Hell.  It’s very funny especially if you like Rowan Atkinson, don’t miss it.

I then added two new videos to my Zecharia Sitchin lens about the Annunaki.  If you haven’t heard of him or the Annunaki I think you might find his theories quite amazing.  They involve the deepest history, going back beyond the great flood and to the creation of mankind.  It’s quite an eye opener if you haven’t explored this topic before.  I added a video clip below to give a brief introduction to what his books are about, and he has written a number of excellent works on this subject.   Thought to be a crackpot thirty years ago, more and more is coming to light about our most ancient past, and pieces are gradually falling into place.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF3yBd9dtyg

Well time for me to head to bed, as a Tom Petty concert takes place on television now.  Yes I like him, but I am tired and I have seen it before.

Hopefully in the morning I will have some good news about work or something  else.  You never know, we had good news today with Debbie’s visa being approved.  Now we just need to get me a windfall and/or a job or a chance to earn some good money.

For All My Unemployed Friends

Posted on by
6

My cry for help since I lost my job 11 days ago has gone out far and wide, and it’s so sad to hear of so many good people who have also lost their jobs.  Not only am I hearing from people that I have networked with over the last year who have lost their jobs, but they have spouses and other family members who have lost their jobs too.   It’s very sad, and these are very difficult times indeed.  I know that this is going to get worse for many before it gets better, but hopefully this post can help if only in a small way.

If you have lost your job, or know someone who has lost theirs, or maybe you know of someone who is looking for an expert in one field or another.  Maybe you know of a company or web site that is good for people searching for employment, or for retraining, earning money online (no scams) etc.

Please, if you need help, or can offer help, or just wish to tell your story to others, post a comment on this message.

Hopefully this simple effort might help connect someone in need with someone who can help.

If I can help even one person, then that’s a start.

So feel free to comment, tell us your story, or let others know how they might be able to seek help.

It doesn’t matter if you are in the  USA, UK or wherever.  Please feel free to post a comment.

Good Luck to everyone in keeping their jobs or finding a good source of income.