I’m finally working again!
It’s not exactly a dream job I managed to land, but I finally got a job… In retail. Having only briefly worked retail before in my lifetime, I have to say that the experience the past couple of weeks is definitely different than what I’m used to doing. It’s probably not so different than most people’s experiences in working retail. Still, for me — someone who has spent the last eight or so years behind the keyboard of a computer in an office or work-from-home setting — it’s a different beast entirely. The physicality of working on my feet again, for starters, is something that I’m still very much getting used to. There’s a lot of pain medication being taken now to help my aching feet and back both before and after my shifts. Expectations are a lot different, too. Perhaps because the experience of working in retail is so common, it seems like many things are expected to be obvious when they are anything but at the moment. What might be the most frustrating aspect of all is the erratic schedule. Plugging you into the schedule whenever you’re needed seems to be the way of things in retail rather than getting you a set schedule.
It’s all a little frustrating, but I’m doing what I can to adjust. Hopefully, I’ll be up to snuff and rolling with the punches before too long.
I’ll certainly be excited to see my first full paycheck, at the very least. While retail positions aren’t exactly known to have the best wages in the world, this position wasn’t awful (more than what my previous job started me at, in the least), so I’m happy to keep plugging away for the time being. Having a source of income at all is something that I desperately needed and this should certainly pay my bills once the income actually starts reaching me. The only concern is my health insurance coverage — I’m going to need to do some online research into what the best and most affordable individual plans are because I’m currently only considered part-time and don’t qualify for coverage from my employer, even though they seem to be scheduling me upwards of 36+ hours. With my fresh diabetes diagnosis, I’m definitely going to need to find a way to cover the price of medications and doctor’s office visits at the very least. Though I have to say, one really good thing about getting more movement and working on my feet again is that my blood sugar levels have been significantly lower lately! But… If you know anything about paying out of pocket for your own medical insurance, please feel free to give me some sage words of wisdom in the comment section!
Live streams and other media content have come to a screeching halt as well since the job began. With my schedule being so random, it’s hard to set things in stone at the moment. Last month though, I was really proud that I was able to pull off a successful sponsorship campaign with the mobile video game Star Trek Fleet Command! It might not seem like much to some of the internet content creators who make really big bucks pulling in massive audiences and doing sponsorships like these, but I made over $100 simply by playing the game live on stream and then asking my community to download and play the game themselves up to a certain point. It doesn’t seem too shabby to me for what amounted to roughly about two hours of game time! Hopefully, once I get back to streaming and internet content creation in general, I’ll get to participate in other fun opportunities like that one! Again, I ask, if you aren’t already following me on Twitch, what’s the problem??
Also, with the advent of some of the new social media platforms to compete against Twitter (now apparently known as X), you can now find me on Threads and Bluesky! I haven’t dedicated a lot of time to either one of those profiles yet, but you never know what will survive on the ever-evolving interwebs!
Until next time…