In 2008 after attending Unseminar 5, I realized jobs and I were not friends, in fact we were in fact not even on friendly terms. If anything, we have a mutual hatred of each other. (As long as it’s mutual right?) And that it was actually possible to make a living online. But I had promised my clients I would work one more season.
One More Season
Tax season started early in November because our company offered a “pre-season” loan that reduces the refund, by giving clients money now. This early loan bothered me ethically, the interest rate was legal, yet the fees associated with it made it reprehensible. Plus unfortunately this mostly preys on the uneducated and we are “encouraged” to push them to get the loan if they sit at our desk.
Starting in November threw me off schedule for the things I needed to have done before Christmas and on my business. But throwing me worse was that twice I had the boss visit me at my desk to publicly yell at me. During this last season she yelled at me at least a dozen times. Yes, yell, raise her voice and yell at me. No, I am not deaf.
Every tax season, since I started at the new office, I would get laryngitis for almost a week. This year was different, I got it in November, in January, and in late February. 3 TIMES. One co-worker was getting her associates degree online when we were slow, my co-workers on crafts that they would later sell. Yet my writing a book was strictly prohibited. When clients came in, my crafty co-workers were given a moment to get things off their desk, I was not. And in the end I got the least pay that I had received in years.
With the laryngitis and other oddities, it was like being given a big “have you finally had enough?” kind of warning.
Roadblocks
So as soon as tax season ended, my credit card got hit with a HUGE fee for an annual subscription that I didn’t know I had. The company refused to refund my money, because I had “agreed” to the subscription. The credit card company refused to work with me. And now I have a subscription to service that has ebooks and articles written by non-English speaking writers. Mistakes are common.
Salem, my now 10 year old cat was attacked by another cat. It’s happened before, he normally needs a few days to recoup, but he started getting worse not better. The vet prescribed antibiotics, and said he’d might need surgery and come back next week. Next week resulted in the same issuance, so 6 weeks after the first visit he finally had surgery and a final week of antibiotics. 🙁 Just in time for Luna to cut her paw open…
Having not been much of one for being sick (except for the annual laryngitis and a bit of flu then), I was shocked to get the flu in the middle of the summer. Every time I tried to make big progress with one of my businesses I got sick. Blocks appearing to get me discouraged and whenever I wanted to make progress. So it was a bummer… but
Progress was made!
July 20th, I hosted a 12 hour web Ustream marathon. Interviewing different people on how to conquer fear. The book I started writing in 2008 was put on a shelf until I could make money. Yet I produced an ebook and two videos. I created 3 new websites during 2009 that have been my new hub, my business and personal blog (which you are reading). My personality has changed to a stronger and more positive.
While there are some who say I am negative, a lot of my posts here must reflect my own stories of abuse because I cannot tell someone else’s story, nor can I tell what has been disclosed to me personally. Plus if I only include the positive how can I hope to help people find the positive from negative situations, or to realize that they deserve better than abusive situations. Too often we only qualify physical abuse when there are other forms of abuse. In addition sometimes what others view as negative is statement of facts for me.
That’s my story… and I’m stickin’ to it.
So please comment with what have been your roadblocks?
MJ
Oh, lots of 2009 was made of roadblock.
We spent most of the year working on getting a new website together. It JUST went live this last Friday. And it still needs internal links. And we don’t have something set right, so either no one is looking at our homepage video or we’re not getting those stats. An we still need to do a lot of videos for it, and internal links. Which I should be highlighting in printouts right now rather than being here, but that’s a different story.
There is one client who owes us thousands for work we did, and we’ve turned over to a collection agency.
There was one client whose business almost went under when the main guy had a major heart attack. So we went out and got other consulting business. Then then got their loans and needed us more than ever. So we’ve had to juggle extra clients while trying to do the web site.
Etc.
Good stuff – we’ve made a couple of videos for the business, and I’ve made a few for my blog. The web site IS finally up, and we’re tracking what’s working and about to test new approaches.
But, Gods, there’s still a lot of crap on our plate that we need to clean off from ’09.
Frondly, Fern
Fern, 2009 seems to be the year of roadblocks for everyone, plus side it looks like 2010 is the year of progress! So I am going to wish us both lots and lots of progress in 2010 (and MANY MANY MANY SUCCESSES) 🙂