I Have a New Job!

No, I'm not working in a theatre again, and I didn't get any jobs with a church (except for filling in for our administrator when she's on holidays, but I was doing that before...).

I skipped the painful submit-a-resume-wait-for-a-call-and-maybe-get-an-interview-but-I'll-never-hear-back-again type of job hunting, and instead applied to our local newspaper to be a...

Paper carrier type person!

Yes, Ruth the paper girl is back. My first run as a paper girl was at the age of ten, my second was about fifteen or more years back, and I'm at it again.

I admit that I need the extra money, but to be honest, I could earn more (a LOT more) flipping burgers for an hour at the local grease joint. I get $0.13 per paper delivered, and my three routes have a grand total of 36 papers. Which is $4.68 per day, and it takes about an hour to deliver. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I also deliver our local free paper plus flyers (way more flyers than paper!). They pay .02 per paper & 1 flyer pack on Tuesdays, and .025 on Thursdays, and an extra .02 per flyer pack above the first. On Thursdays, I've had an average of 3 flyer packs. So each of my 36 deliveries nets me an extra 8.5 cents each per week, for a total payday of 32.94 per week.

Not exactly big money, especially since I use my car to do it and probably spend between five and ten dollars on gas.

Still, it's a really good deal for me.

First off, when I started two weeks ago, I was suffering from back pain so bad that I had to take a fairly expensive OTC medication twice per day in order to remain functional. Within a week, I was down to extra strength Tylenol, and now I'm down to nothing most days. Savings, about $25 per week, plus my liver.

Second, my autistic son accompanies me most days. In fact, I got the route because it was something we could do together that would get us out of the house. I investigated volunteering at our local Re-Store, but they really didn't have anything suitable for us to do. But Robin likes to walk, so the paper route was perfect. The cost of having someone else do something like this with him varies from $10 to $25 an hour. Even on the cheap side, we're saving $50 a week.

Third, I'm out walking every day for most of that hour. According to today's paper (which is another bonus -- one of those papers I get paid to deliver is mine, and it's free!), that will add another 10 or so healthy years to my life. How do I calculate the value of that, I ask you?

And I used to pay about $35 a month for a gym membership I never used, because it was so inconvenient. The paper routes I deliver are a lot closer to my home, and because I've signed a contract, I *have* to do the exercise every day, rain or shine, sick or well, grumpy or happy.

And for the most part, I've been happy. Exercise releases natural endorphins, that help dull pain and decrease depression. I also have met several of my customers, all of whom are friendly and generally cheerful.

One customer I talked to yesterday is eighty years old, and still goes snowshoeing! That's what I want to be like when I'm eighty, and having a daily paper route is a step in the right direction.

A common suggestion of get-out-of-debt books is to take a second job. What most of them don't say is that when you look for a second job, it's always good to think outside the box. Instead of looking for another eight-hour-a-day grind in a factory, try something a little lower class, but with more benefits.

Working in a theatre gave me the chance to see a lot of first run movies for free.

Working at McDonald's gave me more than I wanted of employee-discounted junk food.

Working at Chapters over the Christmas rush last year gave me an employee discount on books, just in time to buy gifts for my family of avid readers.

Now I've got a free paper and an exercise plan -- and they're paying me for it!

Think about where you spend your money, or what activities you enjoy doing, and look to those things for a second job, or a retirement income, or even your primary income! Sometimes, the benefits are worth the lower pay. Don't let anyone tell you that a particular job is too "low life," or "beneath your notice," or "just for kids." Only you can decide the true worth of a job to you.

Falling Off the Wagon, Getting Back on the Horse

I am, as usual, trying to make multiple changes in my life at once. To no one's surprise, I am not acheiving my goals fully in any one area. Hence the lack of blog posts for the last few days.

Other changes I'm trying to make right now:

1) I'm trying to lose weight. I've decided to take this verrrrry slowly, with the first step being that I will eat breakfast every day, and that most days it will be a healthy one. I'm finding this the easiest to keep, because now I have a "breakfast buddy." Every morning, Ally barges into my bedroom, all chipper, and tells me it's time to get up and have breakfast.

To my surprise, I'm usually ready to actually get up! Some mornings, we've had breakfast and gone for a walk, which is even better.

2) I'm trying to get back into the habit of writing every day. This is where the blog-a-thon was supposed to help. Except that one day, Blogger was down so I coulnd't blog. And the next day, we had this big concert and I was at the church from eight-thirty in the morning until eleven at night. And the next day I was too tired. And by the next day, it seemed pointless, since I'd already failed the challenge.

Except that it isn't pointless. In those two weeks of blogging every day, my followers increased four-fold (from two to eight...), and my readership also increased greatly.

So I know that it's worth the effort, and even if I miss a day or two, I need to get back on the horse and keep riding.

3) I'm trying to clean up my house. I thought Ally would be good here, and I'll admit, she has cleaned up the kitchen to the point where I can actually use it for cooking. However, she did that by dumping all the stuff that was in the kitchen that shouldn't have been there into the hallway, so now I have a mess in the hallway.

From which I learn that while having a partner can help you stay on the wagon (see #1 above), having the wrong partner can knock you off it. Furthermore, the right partner for one endeavour might not be the right partner for another endevour.

4) I'm thinking of starting a small business. After coming in second for yet another plum job (when there was only one plum to pick), I'm beginning to understand that my qualifications either aren't recent enough, or aren't exactly what employers are looking for with respect to the positions that interest me. It may well be that if I want to avoid asking, "Do you want fries with that?" for the rest of my working life, I'm going to have to pull up my sleeves and get to work for that lazy, good-for-nothing boss I see in the mirror every morning.

The good news is I have an idea that a) involves using equipment I already have or can borrow for a while, b) I can do, and c) I would truly enjoy. More later if I decide to go with it!

On to market research...