I may have mentioned this before, but I’m really slow at transcription.  I’m good at it, very detailed, triple-check my work and all that, but I’m slow.  I know I’ll get faster with practice, but who knows how long that could take?  So, anyway, I figured it would take me a good bit of time to meet the audio minutes required by the agency before I could take their proofreading test.  I was wrong.  My transcripts have been so good, apparently, that they’re letting me take the proofreading test with less than half the required audio minutes under my belt.

I have to admit, it makes me feel that my recent decisions are being validated.

I’ll still be transcribing for a while, since I’ll have to go through their proofreading training process, and that’s totally fine.  The more transcription I do, the better I’ll get.  And the more exposure to the different jurisdictions, the better.  It’s very exciting, though, don’t you think?

Today was my last day at the office.  I have to admit to equal parts terror and relief.  The last time I deliberately left a job with nothing solid lined up, I was 26 years old and had nothing more than an apartment and three cats.  Now I’m significantly older and I have a mortgage, a van payment, three dogs, a cat, chickens, and goats.  It’s pretty darn scary to realize that there won’t be a guaranteed paycheck for a set amount popping into my bank account every week.  What I earn will be up to me.

The sense of relief I feel at getting out of that place, though…  That very definitely outweighs the terror.  Some things were said and done yesterday and today that really reinforced the fact that it’s a bad environment.  I do not, for one moment, regret turning in my notice.  I walked out with a skip in my step and a song on my lips.

I’ll give it a day or two to sink in, and then I’ll freak out.

I’ve received the most wonderful gift – an offer of support, both tangible and emotional, from people who love and believe in me.  Because of this gift, I will be able to turn in my two-week notice Monday morning.  I am being given the opportunity to take control of my life, work for myself, and do something I truly enjoy.  I never thought I’d be able to do it this soon, or even within a few months.  But now I can.  Of course, that does add a bit more pressure, because letting myself down is one thing, but letting someone else down is another thing entirely.

I can do this.  I know I can.  I’ll keep putting in time with the agency on evenings and weekends, and as soon as I’m out of that office, my new life will get my full attention.  I can hear the bells of freedom ringing…

It’s started!  I was just offered a freelance position with an agency!  Yes!  It’s good for as much time as I can put into it, which means I can work it evenings and weekends while I get better and faster.  It’s all working from home, so I don’t have to struggle with extra commuting or anything like that.  They do require their proofreaders start out doing transcription, which means I have to work on another new skill.  But that’s okay, because that will just make me even more marketable down the road, right?

I don’t even mind doing the transcription – it makes sense that it’s the best way to gain familiarity with the formatting that this agency uses, especially since they work with jurisdictions all over the country.  The downside is that I’m sloooooow at transcription, and they require a certain number of audio minutes before they let you transfer to proofreading.  That’s okay, though.  I’m a hard worker, and I’m determined to turn this into something that ultimately lets me live the life I want.  No two ways about it, this is a big step towards my goal.

Yeesh.  Starting this new business is hard.  Not that I’m actually shocked to discover that, really.  It’s even harder to do working full time.  Those 40+ hours feel more and more like wasted time as each day passes.  I spend the day unhappy and frustrated that I can’t be working on what I actually want to do, then it’s home to critters and chores, and then I finally get to put a couple of hours in on this before I have to crash.  Rinse, repeat.  But that’s okay, because I WILL get there.

Lucky for me, I have a couple of friends who are marketing folks and are willing to help out a bit.  I now have a fully operational website, Hamlin Proofreading, just in case you’re interested.  I have a logo, business cards, and a basic email that I can tweak for sending out to agencies and individuals.  I’m still working on updating the resume, but maybe I’ll get lucky and no one will ask for that.  I still can’t change my LinkedIn profile to reflect the type of work and connections I want, so I’m just putting that aside for now.

The focus now has to be marketing.  Getting my name and information out there, but not just willy-nilly.  It has to go to the right places, the right people.  Well, maybe a bit of the willy-nilly.  After all, you never know where you might stumble across that one person that helps everything take off…

When I moved here a couple of years ago, I was working for a large corporation.  I didn’t dislike working there, but I didn’t love it, either.  We’d re-org’d more times than I could count, and my last manager wasn’t someone I’d choose to work for.  I did get to work from home twice a week, which was great, and more often if Kodiak was having seizures, which wasn’t great.  The commute was 55 miles each way and I had to shift my work hours a bit to mitigate some of the delays caused by rush-hour traffic.  I wasn’t miserable, but I wasn’t happy, and I knew I needed a change.

One of my local friends told me about a great company in the area, so I applied for a position and ended up getting an offer.  No working from home at all, but the commute was significantly more pleasant, so I figured I’d give it a try.  While I still don’t regret leaving the previous job, going to this company was a horrible idea.  They present a fabulous face to the public, but if you’re unlucky enough to work in the office, it’s brutal.  My boss in particular is just…  I don’t even know how to describe it.  I might have thought it was just me, if so many other people weren’t so unhappy, too.  I won’t go into details, but l will say that it didn’t take me more than a few months to realize I needed to get out of there quick, fast, and in a hurry.

I started applying to other jobs, and was interviewed by a recruiter who found me on LinkedIn and reached out to me (that was a much needed confidence boost).  A big concern, though, is that I still live out in the country, so any job that is in my field and pays well is going to be a nasty commute.  I told the recruiter that working from home at least once or twice a week is a non-negotiable requirement.  At the end of the day, what I really want is work I enjoy that lets me stay home as much as possible.  I can’t tell you how much guilt I feel every time I walk out of this house, knowing Kodiak has recently had a seizure and is very likely going to have another while I’m gone, and I have no option but to go into the office or take a day without pay (even though I’m salaried – seriously).  I just can’t do it anymore.

A few months ago, I started poking around online, looking for options that might give me what I want.  You have to be careful; there are so many scams out there.  But I found something that really seems to be legit – proofreading.  I’ve always been one to spot the errors, but I freely admit that over the years, I’ve learned to just look past them unless they were utterly egregious.  I have enough stress without fretting over someone else’s bad grammar.  I took the courses, spending money I can’t really afford, and bought the necessary materials, spending more money I can’t really afford.  I pushed through, working evenings and weekends.  As of today, I have officially completed the course.  Now I have to do the little stuff, like build a website, make connections, and market, market, market.  I can’t really put the information on my LinkedIn profile, because there are people at work who stalk those things and if the wrong person sees it, it’s as likely as not that I’d get walked out the next day.  But that doesn’t mean I can’t market myself in other ways, right?   Here’s hoping that, with enough time, I can turn this into something that will let me leave that awful place.  I can handle poor – well, not too poor, since I do have bills to pay – but I can’t handle this constant beat-down feeling that I haven’t managed to shake in months.

Fingers crossed.