@STV-H4H

3 weeks ago

A great topic. My younger days were a long slow, low paying process that had adventure and carefreeness and also a poor way to learn everything the hard way. After reaching around 30yrs of age, I was fed up with that kind of uncertainty and was ready to return to school, and get a degree and enter the workforce indoors in an office environment. After about 3 years of that I was getting very sick of the routine and started feeling like something had to change. It took another 3-4 years, primarily because I had no real idea what I should do next. One day I found another job, designing kitchen and bath type CAD work. I got all my ducks in a row, spent the next 4-5 weeks transitioning out of a job I hated, a company that wasn’t going to fire me, and joined one that seemed like a great place. On day 10, the boss told me that it wasn’t working out. My second child was born a few weeks earlier, this employer knew this when he encouraged me to make the move. Yet after literally 80hrs into the job he complained that because my hair was too long (I’d actually had very long hair before I met him, I cut it short, like insanely short, the weekend before actually meeting him) but it was not long. It had grown (my hair can take a year to reach my collar when it’s an inch above, it grows insanely slowly) barely 1/4” probably in the month since I’d first met this guy. Anyway. The next 5-6 years, this was 2005-2011ish, I struggled to find anything. Working at sandwich shops, grocery stores, even doing road survey work for the WisDOT for a year. Stress caused my marriage to suffer. Our first child was discovered to have severe developmental difficulties and epilepsy. This furthered the difficulties finding a job. No employer was interested in a new employee that told them his infant daughter was in the hospital 4-6 times a year, for a week at a stretch. My wife was a high school teacher, a masters in education, so her job was the bread and butter and insurance etc. I was a stay home dad. I never wanted to be a parent. I loved my children, but having kids was never anything I’d dreamed of. Having a disabled child was everything I ever feared about having kids! One day our marriage counselor suggested, after my wife had informed him that I was mechanically capable and could repair nearly anything, I’d also learned construction skills to some extent, particularly electrical. He suggested I merely advertise my skills, handyman. $25/hr. I scoffed. I’d been begging for $12-14/hr for so long, less than I’d made at the job I stupidly quit, and to imagine anyone giving me $25hr was unthinkable. But after a few months of denial I wrote an ad and posted it on Craigslist. 30min later I was called. I replied a storage shed door at a small used car dealership. I made $150 for a 5-6 hour job. That was 2012. The first couple years were tough. I didn’t know how to represent myself, but I persisted. These days, I charge (I don’t work hourly, ever) per job, set fees generally, but everything is always negotiable. Most days I’m working for well over 100/hr and I turn away more work than I can accept. Hundreds of repeat customers, many of whom kept me reasonably busy through the pandemic! I do pro bono work when the situation seems it a good thing. My daughter’s now an adult, still disabled and epileptic. My wife has divorced me, primarily because the stresses of everything involved in our collective lives having a child who is extremely difficult to handle, but her teaching career was diminished by the GOP, the pandemic, the hatred of being an educated woman who was perceived to be a rich white lady, by the people whom were in her classrooms who could say anything, and the administration would not step up in support of their teachers. Kristin was the most dedicated advocate for the children she cared enough to teach, yet them and their trash parents made her ultimately have a couple nervous breakdowns in the classroom shortly following the return to in classroom teaching. This topic today, at least today for me, speaks volumes about the importance of finding yourself and your place in a better place in the working environment. Thanks for this as well as every single one of your other videos.

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