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Strangely enough, I tend to be most active on this blog when I am not fully employed or am unemployed. Thus why there has been a many year gap between my last post and this current one. I am back to being unemployed again!

For those of you keeping score at home, I thought I would actually recount my real life steps for getting fully employed again.

A lot of research has been taking place on my part. First off, I had the thought of living in Montana to keep an eye on my aging mother (who is comfortably in a full service retirement community, but sure would love to see us kids more often, why can’t we just move up to Great Falls?) But every time I look at the jobs available in Great Falls, and my known current fixed expenses and debts, I just can’t see living in Great Falls and not getting further into debt. Although Great Falls has two Starbucks and two Walmarts and an Air Force base, the city’s population is only 55,000 or so, with a lot of small businesses, so there are not a lot of jobs to choose from. And certainly not high paying ones. If only she lived in a college town like Bozeman or ideally, Missoula, a city I enjoy a lot. But alas, she doesn’t.

Last year I was working on the concept of moving to Texas in the Austin area near my brother, and convincing our mother to move down to live near us by living with me, but I have pretty much given up on that. As much as she wants to see us more often, she really is not wanting to move ever again.

So the only logical thing I can think to do is stay here in Los Angeles, take advantage of all the job opportunities I have here, and work on paying off all my debts as quickly as possible, work on beefing up my ability to work virtually (either by improving my skills, learning new skills like coding, writing and publishing a best selling book or setting up everything here in LA before moving up to Great Falls.) Having less fixed expenses and debt will greatly increase my options as to what jobs I can take.

That, plus once I no longer live here in Los Angeles, I can rent my condominium out, thus increasing my income by not even living here!

So that’s the current plan. I even have an outline of working at least two full time jobs, one graveyard, and one regular business hours, and the lesser paying one will be used to whittle down my debts, while the greater paying one will go towards my regular fixed expenses, upcoming taxes and actual savings, while also taking the time to get my condo ready for another’s occupancy. There are things I put up with that if resolved, will make the place more comfortable to live in, such as the fact I have very low water pressure in the shower, and no steam radiator hooked up in my apartment, thus no heat. But I live on the fourth floor, so I am plenty warm during the spring/summer/fall months!

So enough about the plan, here were today’s actions:

Between the hours of 6:30 am and 10:30 am, I all I did was submit 10 resumes with unique cover letters for the various jobs I had gleaned appropriate to apply from the previous day. The gleaning probably took a couple of hours total, I wasn’t really counting them. I did some more gleaning today while on the bus. I will do some more tonight.

My sources for jobs are Craigslist LA for a random assortment of things, entertainmentcareers.net for Entertainment jobs, Dan’s List for non-profits, Indeed and ZipRecruiter.

I wrote an email to an HR assistant for a job I interviewed for a week and a half ago, since my interviewers had informed me a decision would be reached this week. Still no word back. When I was job hunting in Texas last year, I found not informing people they were no longer being considered is the new norm, so I feel it necessary to reach out to find out my status so I can stop hoping and move on definitely to new options.

Someone tried calling me as I was descending down the escalator to catch the Red Line Metro, but when I answered I lost reception. I went back up the escalator, but got a general line and left a message asking if someone had tried to reach me about a job. No answer or email for that. But I did find out the company was Magento, an e-commerce platform similar to shopify, over in Culver City. Since not all the jobs I applied for gave the names of the companies, it could have been one of my resume recipients.

My cell phone and its continuing memory issues meant today I deleted Hulu and Netflix off my phone to increase available memory, and downloaded two more apps I had been eyeing for the gig economy: Rover and Wag, both dog walking (and pet sitting) apps. I am about half way through setting up my Rover account, but now need 4 pictures of me walking dogs. Yikes! The dogs I have owned and cared for, no one ever took a picture of me walking them, just me cuddling them. So that is on hold.

I also attempted to get the InLine4You app set up, where I go and stand in line for someone (presumably to get tickets or entrance to some event) but even re-loading it, the app is complaining about my email address and not having a proper authentication certificate. What?

I have already gotten started on another gig app, created here in wonderful wacky LA, PeopleWalker, where you get paid to take walks with strangers. I think there is an additional step, like an online interview, so I need to go re-read the instructions, since I was approved but can’t seem to set myself up online to be available to be selected.

Between all the gig economy apps, I figure (once I get them set up and I am available to work them!!!) clearly most will not be transferable to working outside of LA, but they should help with my financial needs as of right now, as most have payment times within 48 hours of services being provided. And once I get my apartment more presentable, I would be able to offer the option of boarding other people’s pets in my apartment, something I can only do now as my cats are currently living at my brother’s.

One job I saw on Craigslist that I am putting together a response to is for a band manager of a reggae band down in the South Bay (Hermosa Beach, CA). They want help getting more local gigs. Not a huge fan of reggae, as I hear a lot of the songs sounding the same-ish to my uneducated ear, but this band I liked, as it was harder rock with reggae influences. So to research them, I had to listen to their songs off their recent EP. It’s a tough life, but I had to force myself to listen to enjoyable music…..

Total time so far today spent working on getting employment, from research, to emails, trying to set up apps, and more research: 7 hours so far, with another couple of hours expected tonight.

Tomorrow I will be reaching out to any dog owners I know to arrange dog walking photos, get started on the Wag app, follow up with the band manager request, send out more resumes, follow up with a couple of former employers to see if they might need some short term help while I am looking for other things, and also follow up on the lead a friend gave me for contact information of a temp agency she is working with. Phew!

See, this is exactly why staying in Los Angeles makes the most sense for finding multiple employments – my friends and network are here. Who would I know in Great Falls or Austin to ask if I could photograph me walking their dogs? Who would give me a lead for temp agency contacts? And what former employers could I possibly ask if I could provide some services for, never having worked in those cities before?

And up above, something visual. My favorite cafe in Austin, Texas – Stinson’s in Rosedale, housed in a former gas station. Not only a cafe, but they also have a food truck, and it is a bar, and has live music! The best of all worlds. And free wi-fi. And a staff that doesn’t seem to mind patrons sitting for quite a bit. Laid back is the name of the vibe. Y’all are welcome!