Since losing my job and becoming a contractor for my former full-time employer, life has been less chaotic than I predicted.
The former full-time company barely assigned me any contracting work in December… I earned less than half of my rent from them last month. When I went to the office for a meeting (and to rescue my office plants), the boss seemed angry at me for not making myself “available.”
Um, I’m sorry, didn’t he just let me go? Did he expect the same level of hand-holding and checking-in and bending-over-backwards now that I’m a lowly contractor? No, sir.
Then after getting reamed out for being a bad, mysterious contractor who doesn’t sign on IM for days at a time (email is obsolete, I guess), I was told my health insurance will end in January. (Only a few weeks ago, I learned that my boss forgot to pay the health insurance bill, so I was without coverage for November.)
Super.
But other than that, things have been pretty blah. I’ve been freelancing for a startup website with an environmental slant, and the founders (a married couple) have been really impressed with my work. I’ve gone from billing on a per-project basis, to 10 hours per week, to now virtually full-time, 9am-5pm. They keep telling me how much they want to hire me as soon as they secure another round of investors… but I’m not holding my breath. We’ll see what happens, it’s a harsh climate for startups.
I also have been sending out a few cover letters. People are definitely posting more now that the holidays are over, but I wouldn’t say there are a lot of high quality jobs out there. Most job postings in web development around here are for government contractors… boo.
Last night I sent a cover letter at 2am and received an email with a follow-up response within 15 minutes. So that’s good… Other than that, I went on one interview before Christmas that ended up not going anywhere.
Popularity: 24% [?]
Good Luck, honey!!!