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]

Back when I last was looking, I used idealist.org to look for possible jobs, as they had interesting nonprofit, do-good sorts of places.

Cool. I didn't know that site existed. Thank you!

I know you don't have a library science degree or any museum-related degree, but maybe your knowledge of latin and greek would help you in either of those sorts of jobs? Help cataloguing or indexing things, or something?

I am fairly certain that I do not have the training or experience for a museum to want me as anything other than customer service, but based on the conversation above I am no longer writing off library work without consideration (I had assumed it would require a library science degree).

What about substitute teaching in the public school system?

I worry a lot about teaching based on my stamina. I can have days when I walk all over a city and I'm fine and days when being on my feet for more than a few hours wipes me out completely. I don't want this job search to be a process of committing to things I have to renege on. (If nothing else, that will look really dumb on my resume.) There's also the fact that I haven't taught a class since 2006 and I don't want to add to the number of bad teachers in the world. Tutoring, I feel less like I'd screw up.

Does the Harvard film archive need anyone? … I'm not sure what you would do for them, but maybe something? Or at Coolidge Corner?

I wish! I've never seen them post job listings. I would love to be paid to program a film series, but I don't know how anyone makes that happen.

There are bunches of think-tanky type places and interesting NGOs in the area--would the Union of Concerned Scientists need anyone to manage a newsletter, say, or Cultural Survival? You can go to these places' websites and see what things they have available.

And that's something else I hadn't thought of. Thank you again!

[edit] It is extraordinarily difficult to respond to these comments without seeing Tiny Wittgenstein everywhere.

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

My experience in Somerville is years out of date, but I would recommend strongly against substitute teaching if you have stamina issues. (I do now, which is one reason I'm not doing it myself.) I mean, yes, it's flexible in that you can choose which days, if they call you, you choose to go in. But once you show up, you're kind of stuck for the rest of the day. You might luck out and get a well-behaved class whose normal teacher is on top of it. Or even if the normal teacher is with it, the class might be having an unruly day. It's kind of a crapshoot.

I don't know if you specifically have my trouble with being awake in the morning hours, but given what grade levels you'd be substitute teaching, that could be an issue too.

[sovay]

I don't know if you specifically have my trouble with being awake in the morning hours, but given what grade levels you'd be substitute teaching, that could be an issue too.

The insomnia is a major reason I try not to schedule mornings in the course of my ordinary life. I mean, on Monday I got up at five-thirty in the morning after two hours of sleep and ate breakfast and packed and worked a little and caught a train at eight-fifteen—and then I passed out awkwardly for the next four hours. That's not an option if I have to be somewhere at eight-fifteen and then mentally functional for the next eight hours. It's one of the things about a steady job that worries me a lot.

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

I have intermittent insomnia myself so you have my sympathies. But yeah, this would make teaching potentially rough--I mean, again, you can pick your days, but you also can't know in advance what days they'll call you. Also, I don't know about you, but I don't do well when my sleep (when I can get it) is interrupted, and getting morning phone calls on the days that I do need morning sleep is a pretty good way to get my sleep interrupted. (Agh, I have no idea if I'm phrasing this well.) Tutoring, besides being more flexible, also has the advantage of generally taking place in the afternoons or possibly other times during the weekends. (I've only tutored through college centers, not on my own, but the logistics are pretty inarguable.)

[sovay]

Also, I don't know about you, but I don't do well when my sleep (when I can get it) is interrupted, and getting morning phone calls on the days that I do need morning sleep is a pretty good way to get my sleep interrupted. (Agh, I have no idea if I'm phrasing this well.)

You are phrasing perfectly reasonably and I agree with you: I don't find it easy to fall back asleep after being woken by something as jarring as a phone call.

Tutoring, besides being more flexible, also has the advantage of generally taking place in the afternoons or possibly other times during the weekends. (I've only tutored through college centers, not on my own, but the logistics are pretty inarguable.)

Yeah. And I have tutored and I know I'm not terrible at it, so Tiny Wittgenstein applies less there, too.

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the deal with classroom management is besides taking practice, it seems difficult to tell who has classroom "presence" and with what age groups short of putting them in the classroom and watching what happens. Granted, substitute teaching (as opposed to full-time) lets you back out fast if it doesn't work out, so there's that. I'm good with high schoolers, middle schoolers drive me nuts, and I would flat-out refuse to teach elementary school unless there was an emergency.

Anyway, good luck!