I feel like I've wasted the last 2 years of my life.
2 years ago, I started running into some serious financial issues. School is expensive, and I wasn't getting enough money to afford to pay rent, tuition, books, food, etc. I started putting it on credit cards, and taking out other loans, hoping to get through my degree before it would catch up to me.
It caught up to me much quicker than I thought it would. It's been a downward spiral since then. And every time I feel like I'm making progress towards going back, I get knocked back to where I started.....
At first, all I needed to do was get enough money to pay back the outstanding tuition I owed. I looked hard for a full time job over the summer months here in Ottawa, but spent months unemployed. At the same time, because I had a hard time finding a new place to live for the fall, I had to deal with overlapping leases on two different rooms. Paying double rent while not making any money is pretty shitty.
After almost 2 months of searching for a job, I had to give into the fact that there wasn't anything available, so I went to my original hometown and lived at home for the summer. Within a week, I found a job working at one of the factories.
The job was great. The pay, while not the greatest, was decent, and I was working 60 hrs a week, with overtime starting at 40 hours, so, relative to my unemployed situation, I was rolling in the dough. But living at home fucking sucked. My father died when I was 14, and my mother and I do not get along well at all. She's also seriously struggling financially, and she still has my 3 younger siblings to worry about, so going home ended up creating a lot of tension.
While paying double rent for rooms in a city I wasn't even living in, I was still able to save up more than enough money where I could go back to school in the fall. Except I knew that full time school and a part time job wouldn't cut it (it had already failed me), I had to work full time and go to school part time. Starting in August, I was already looking for a job, even a shitty one, in Ottawa. I knew that as long as I had something that was barely above minimum wage, and a consistent 40 hrs a week, I could afford the minimum payments on my credit card debts, my room, food, my phone, etc. It would be tight, and I'd have absolutely zero life, but it would be doable.
Over the summer, I was working 60 hrs a week on the production line. After my shifts, I volunteered to help out with the engineers, to get some experience (I'm studying engineering myself, and a chance at some practical experience, even voluntary, would have been an amazing thing to add to my resume). In the process, I noticed a way to significantly increase production on the line I was working on. Coincidentally, the customer purchasing parts from that line also wanted the factory to increase production. The standard thinking in that case would be to expand the line relative to the increase in production, and they had a plan in place to do it, but my view on it was different, because I actually worked on the line, and learned every single job involved, from start to finish. Because of that, I was able to identify different bottlenecks, and I proposed a different solution to reduce the effect of those bottlenecks, effectively increasing production (and pretty significantly). After running the numbers with some of the engineers and accountants, I put in a proposal for changing the line. It wasn't super-detailed, but it was still 14 pages long.
I impressed the shit out of them. So much so that they offered me a pretty sick job. With overtime, I could potentially hit 6 figures. The job was going to come with a lot of autonomy, and was going to be me solving a lot of different problems with the machines as they arise. I love solving problems like that, and being able to be my own boss, and working by myself for the most part is ideal, because I'm semi-introverted. I get along with other people fine, but when I get in the zone, I can accomplish some crazy good stuff when I'm not distracted. For someone who basically got kicked out of university a few months earlier (financial reasons, not grades), this was an amazing opportunity.
I had already told them that my last day would be at the end of August. 3 days before that, they threw the offer at me. I already had job interviews lined up in Ottawa, and I had saved up enough money where I could pay off the tuition, and get myself back to school for the winter semester. All I had to do was get a shitty, permanent full time job in September or October.
So my choices were - either take the job offer and potentially forget about getting my degree, or take the chance and get back to school.
I'm sure, from the tone of my post so far, you can guess which choice I made. Yea. I gave up on what seemed like a dream job for me, in order to pursue a degree.
The interviews didn't lead to a job. Even with some stellar references.....
I applied to everything and anything. I contacted all kinds of temporary employment agencies to just start doing something, anything.....
September came and went. As did October. Slowly, I stopped giving out my really good resumes, and my really good references, and started giving out worse ones, just hoping that I could find something, because it seemed that nobody wanted to hire someone who seemed as ambitious as myself. I didn't find a job until mid-November. By then, the money I had saved up to pay off the tuition was gone to living expenses and payments for debts. I was pretty close though, so I still had hope, if I worked at saving as much as I could.
The job I found was only a temporary contract. It was to manage inventory during a particularly busy period of time for them. It was estimated to be for 8 weeks, but at this point, I was desperate, so I took it.
I did the job too well. I finished everything after 6 weeks. So they let me go 2 weeks early. Of course, I didn't get pay for the next 2 weeks.....
So now I'm out of a job, and it's just before Christmas..... Nobody hires just before Christmas, but I manage to find a job through an agency after a week. The place is an absolute shithole, and thinking back on it, I'm amazed that I didn't get injured while working there. But I was thinking about going back to school, so I just went with it.
And then OSAP.....
The biggest chunk of my debt is to student loans through a provincial student assistance program. After you graduate, they leave you alone for 6 months before they come after you to start repaying, in order to give you time to get a job and get settled. Unfortunately for me, I've been out of school for 6 months now, so they want me to start repaying..... Well, "want" is a funny word. They just take the money out of my account. And I owe them enough to buy a decent car..... Imagine having to front car payments, but having no car....
Sadly, at this point, I was only a couple hundred bucks from being able to go back to school. And if I had been enrolled, they would have left me alone.
So at this point, I'm living paycheque to paycheque. After about a month, this warehouse job decides to switch me to a different shift, and then starts to reduce everyone's hours on the shift I'm on, so I'm no longer able to make enough money at this job to survive, and with the hours I had, it was impossible to find a part time job on the side. I find another warehouse job, and don't look back.
This new warehouse is run by a pretty reputable Canadian company, so I'm hopeful yet again. Since I'm crazy broke at this point, I explain to them at my interview that I'd like to have some accomodation to work a part time job around this job (I cannot afford a vehicle, so I am highly limited by public transit, which is actually really bad in Ottawa if you do not operate during peak hours). They are surprisingly accomodating. It doesn't take long for me to get a second job in the works.
I'm 6 ft 3 (190cm), and 250ish pounds (110kg), with a 32 inch waist (81cm), and 50 inch chest (127cm), and I used to play football. I'm a pretty big, strong, imposing figure, and my football connections help land me interviews with owners at a few bars in Ottawa. I get myself reserved in some of the classes I need to get my security license (needed in Ottawa to be a bouncer), and basically have a 2nd job lined up for me within 2 months of starting at this new warehouse.
And then I sprain my wrist at work. It's not bad, but it's bad enough where I need to get it checked out by a doctor and needed a day off of work (and then the following weekend )to let it recover.
While I'm in the process of seeing the doctor, I get a phone call "don't show up to work next week"..... Yea, I got fired. And they claimed it was due to poor "performance". Meanwhile they numerically track your performance, and as far as I was made aware, I was the 2nd highest performing, with the least errors in my department, even though I was the newest guy there, and had heard nothing but good things from management.
Let's just say, at this point, I'm fucking pissed.
I work a few odd-jobs, sometimes only lasting a single day, at this point, before finding my way into another warehouse. This one is afternoons, so the job as a bouncer on the side will not work.
The place is a bitch to get to. It is not really bus accessable, and because of the hours, I end up having to literally run through a makeshift trail through a wooded area, in the dark and holding a flashlight, in order to catch the very last bus that goes remotely close to this place. And if they wanted me to stay for overtime? It was a good 2 hr walk to the nearest place I could catch a bus that still runs late at night, and another hour to get home..... It fucking sucked.....
When I was hired, I was told it was a temporary position, but they were looking for potential candidates for permanent positions. Meanwhile one temporary guy who was there had been there for ~5 years. However, the permanent people get paid pretty well, and I'd be able to afford a vehicle if I was brought on permanently.
I worked there for 4 months. There had been no sign they were going to hire me permanently, so I quit to find a new job. Taking that trail in the summer was a bitch, but there was no way it would be possible in the winter, and if they weren't going to hire me on permanently, then I was wasting my time. And as hard as I tried, I could not find a part time job around these hours..... I was living week to week still.....
I found work at various places for the next month and a bit, before landing a job at yet another warehouse.
This one definitely could have lasted longer-term. While it was still afternoons, I was getting paid more per hour, getting more hours, and it was more accessible. Things are going good.
I work there for ~2 months, then I get a phone call from a company that wants me in for an interview. I don't recall sending them a resume., but decide I'll check it out.
I'm expecting this to be another place looking for a dumb employee, just like the rest of the places that have hired me in the last year..... I show up looking pretty unprofessional, and chewing gum. Yes, I conciously decided to chew gum at the interview. I don't chew gum..... Seriously, I still have about half of that pack left, and that was from ~6 months ago now.....
They didn't have one of my dumbed down resumes, they had one of the original ones I sent out a year before. My heart sank, because I knew that I needed to make an impression in that case, and I basically did the exact opposite.....
It turns out that they were looking for someone who had manufacturing experience, and was good at solving problems. The company builds a lot of custom machinery (heavy stuff, like transport truck sized stuff), as well as had experience reading and interpreting blueprints (which I have from engineering studies) and experience with computers and stuff like excel and auto-cad (which I also have from my studies)..... I was basically the perfect candidate for the job. And I showed up looking rough, messy, unshaven, and chewing gum.....
Surprisingly, they still offered me the job. Part of the job was going to be teaching me a lot of very useful stuff. I was eventually going to be certified in welding and electrical wiring, for instance. The hours were way better (monday to thursday, 10 hr days, while still getting off early enough in the day to make it back to campus for night classes), and the pay was way better too. I would have been stupid to turn it down.
Or so I thought.
I gave my notice at the warehouse I was working at, and started for this new company. When I started, I had a brand new tool box designated to me. It was like a dream, basically every power and hand tool I could think of, all of which was still in the wrapping. The job seemed really awesome, and I was already starting to get involved with writing new procedure documentation. I was learning a shitload, and still had more to learn before I could really prove to be useful.
Then after 1 week they decide I'm not the right person for the job.
Fuck my life.
Back to square one.....
I search and manage to find a job working at an auto detailer that specializes with higher end vehicles (close to half of the vehicles we dealt with were BMW's). I was originally hired to maintain their inventory, but I quickly proved to be a natural at actually working on the vehicles, so I started doing more of that. While not the best pay per hour, it wasn't bad, and I was consistently getting 50+ hrs a week, which more than made up for that. Everything was going good, I was getting along with my bosses, our customers, etc. I was learning a lot of tricks of the trade, and actually taught my boss a few tricks I picked up elsewhere. I'm making enough where I should be able to get back to school in ~3 or 4 months, and then cut back my hours in order to attend classes (they were willing to let me come in late/leave early for classes if I needed to, which is something I thought was pretty awesome).
Then business came to a halt just before Christmas. And I mean a complete halt. They laid off a lot of people, one of which was myself. It would have been nice to get some more notice, but honestly, I saw it coming. We were all twiddling our thumbs for most of the day for 2 straight weeks before they started laying people off. And I was actually one of the last they laid off, they laid off several people who were working there for years before they laid me off, so I know I made a good impression, but it wasn't enough.
Of course, nobody hires right before Christmas, and I wasn't as lucky as I was the year before, so I don't find a job until the beginning of January (last month). Pay is decent, I'm getting a bit over 40 hrs a week, but try as I might, I haven't been able to find a part time job on the side, so I'm still living week to week.
A year and a half ago I weighed 255. I weighed myself tonight and I'm currently at 214. I've lost 41 lbs (18.5 kg) in 18 months. And it's not becuase I'm dieting (my diet is shitty, cheap, high calorie foods for the most part, which is terrible because I'm type 2 diabetic), it's because I'm not eating enough, because I simply can't afford to..... I constantly think that the money would be better used elsewhere..... I used to enjoy booze, but I've pretty much stopped drinking (I've had a total of 6 alcoholic beverages since Christmas). I don't do any drugs of any kind.
These last two years have been an insane roller coaster of ups and downs, with violent twists and turns. I always felt like I made the best decision based on the information I had at hand, but nothing seems to ever work out as planned.....
It's insanely frustrating to think that just a year and a half ago, I gave up a job where I could have completely paid off my debts within a year. While making that kind of money, I'd have no incentive to ever go back to school, so I'd almost certainly give up on my degree.
And it's even more frustrating to know that had I taken that job, I would have been kicking myself wondering "what if I did go back to school".....
The same applies for any of the major changes I've made in the last 2 years, like leaving the warehouse for the company that makes industrial equipment..... I know it's frustrating to look at those kinds of choices and think that it would have been better if I just did something different, but I know that if I did anything different, I'd be kicking myself for not taking the chance.
EPT
