If you want to eat, you've got to earn a bob

[sovay]

Dear internet, talk to me about jobs.

Please note that this post is not a request for money or offers of employment. The situation which I'm reviewing is the fact that my Nokia job is not sufficient income for half a household. I could afford last year's six-month apartment with adrian_turtle partly because it was a smaller place and partly because I had built up savings. It is in the nature of savings to be finite. As things stand now, we are secure only if derspatchel remains responsible for two-thirds of the rent and similar expenses, which is really not a long-term option. I had been meaning to ask for advice on this front at the beginning of the year, but the beginning of the year was rather more medical than planned—it took until this past week to feel that we were starting to stabilize again after the whole exciting bone-break experience—and now some developments have made the question particularly acute.

I have pretty much no fucking idea how to find a more than part-time job with my scattershot qualifications and physical limitations. I am aware that I am almost certainly overestimating the degree to which I am unemployable: I have two master's degrees and I'm very good with the written word, even if my resume displays almost as impressive a break after 2006 as Rob's ankle in January. I also have several chronic health issues: I fail to sleep on a regular basis: I have real reservations about any kind of work that requires me to be on my feet a lot of the time or holding down a fixed schedule. The Nokia job is great because it's work-from-home and doesn't care what hours I work so long as it's the same number every week, but it does not suffice. I have been recommended teaching and I worry about my stamina. I have been recommended editing and I don't know that my previous experience is professional enough. I'm sure there must be other options that are not retail, but I don't know where to start looking. I mean that almost literally.

And I know the economy is garbage right now, as it pretty much has been ever since I needed a job rather than a graduate student's stipend, but there must be something I haven't thought of. Hence leaving this post unlocked. I am trying to cast as wide a net of other people's opinions as possible. I will try not to bristle if you suggest things I have already thought of, or know for one reason or another will not actually work. Telling me that you would set me up for life as a writer if only you had the resources, however, is probably not very helpful to me.

(We will return to your regularly scheduled reportage of New York City sometime after I have slept and this migraine-like headache has stopped flickering at me. I am very pleased with how my portion of the reading went. It was cool to hear rinue perform and meet marlowe1 in person again now that his hair has changed color. Someone asked me to sign their copy of King David and the Spiders from Mars afterward and I had not been expecting that. There was currywurst. Definitely worth the trip.)

Comments

[sovay]

Are you a fast typist? My transcription job got me through grad school, and while mine was in-office, I know there are others that will allow you to work from home; it is also a frequently required and decently-paid freelance skill.

Yes, and my transcription skills as measured by songs, lectures, and spoken word performances are good. I do not type quickly enough without errors to transcribe while listening without frequent rewinding, but I make very few permanent mistakes of spelling or grammar regardless of what I write. What kinds of fields require this work—medical, legal, academic?

I also have a friend who's been supplementing his part-time work with freelance textbook indexing, so if that's something that would be of interest to you I can ask him how he got started with that.

Sure. I hadn't even thought of that, although indices must come into being somehow.

[skygiants]

All of the above, plus media -- interviews and b-roll for documentaries and news programs and DVD extras and such that need to be transcribed so that they can be edited into something usable, which is where most of my experience has been in. Media transcription I have found to be often often educational and/or entertaining, although it is equally often mind-numbingly frustrating and dull. For a more entertaining description of the variety of freelance transcription work available, I recommend this article.

I got used to using a transcription foot pedal at my in-office job, so when I switched to freelancing at home, I purchased my own. The foot pedal lets you play, pause and rewind a file without having to move your fingers from the keyboard, and therefore speeds me up considerably. But there's also free software that lets you do similar things with keyboard shortcuts, I just find the foot pedal a lot easier.

I will get back to you on the textbook indexing!

[sovay]

All of the above, plus media -- interviews and b-roll for documentaries and news programs and DVD extras and such that need to be transcribed so that they can be edited into something usable, which is where most of my experience has been in.

Those all sound like things I could handle, shockingly. Do you have any pointers toward companies you recommend working with? Or should I just throw "transcription jobs in Boston" into Google and try to winnow out the obvious ads?

I will get back to you on the textbook indexing!

Thank you very much!

[skygiants]

Yeah, unfortunately, my in-office company was NYC-based and all my freelance jobs have come in through word of mouth/direct connections, so to find a Boston-area or web-based company Google is probably your best bet. Good luck! I hope you can find something!