Taking a Calculated Leap Without Losing Momentum

As an independently contracted delivery driver, delivering groceries and food for the last three years full time (and then some), I've had to evaluate my opportunities and the conditions I face each day, and choose where to push harder, where to lay off, and when to simply back away.

Because I can't afford an accident - emotionally, physically, or financially, I have set the condition that if my delivery area gets a decent amount of precipitation - snow, or rain, occasionally sleet, and the temperature drops below 34 degrees, I go straight home.

It kills me, at times, because I need the money, often badly, but the feeling of being out of control of your vehicle as it slides towards stationary objects, refusing to respond to the brakes, pumped firmly or slammed, is not something most people casually forget after the first impact. And I won't forget either.

So I'm home early tonight, uncomfortable in my drafty dining room, and weirdly still in the home that's usually a place I'm frantically trying to get things done before I go to bed, and rarely sit still in.

The way the world, mid-pandemic, is changing is clear and bold to me, and despite the temptation of a regular paycheck, an easy paycheck, as far as retail or customer service goes, compared to what I'm doing now, I also notice how often customers and co-workers aren't keeping their distance from employees, and how out of breath I get when I'm wearing a mask and doing physical labor continuously, and lastly, the fear of an accident on bad roads, when I'm forced to travel to get to that supposedly easy money, finishes off the sharper edges of the temptation.

So I go back to reviewing my list of established incomes, to investigating my list of potential incomes, and to wondering what's wrong with me that I can't do, without thinking about it, what everyone else seems to be able to do.

Or is is why everyone else doesn't do what I'm doing? I'm not sure, exactly.

My cousins - my second cousins to be exact - so a secret, mysterious branch of my family that has come back out of the woodwork, where they were hiding in plain sight before my mom died, and my uncertain position has come more out into the open, have been a catalyst of a sort I haven't experienced in a while. They're not wanting me to do what everyone else is - they value my strange uniqueness, and think there's potential to do more than be an auto-tron.

You know the phrase, "I didn't know what I didn't know?" That fits my life perfectly, while often the response from the 'mundanies' to this is, "Well, why didn't you ask?" Uh, duh, cuz I didn't know to ask about what I didn't know, thank you very much.

But trying to transition to working from home, when my cost of living is admittedly nasty-high, and I have no savings to protect against a less than delightful outcome, is testing my perseverance. I still have to do deliveries all day, every day, not making enough to keep up with my bills, and then use the night time, which I'd otherwise use for keeping up with my house, resting (ha ha, ha ha!!!) and sleeping, to get set up on websites that start you out as a flunky with dangerously low pay for the time you spend doing the work, and hoping that there's something more significant awaiting the patient and persistent newbie.

For example, I signed up with a transcription website that allowed inexperienced individuals in, and gave a good instruction manual, etc. I did enough assignments to get me into non-newbie range, where there were assignments that paid $30 or so, for about an hour of audio. The problem is that a good transcriptionist will pump out that hour of audio at a 1:4 ratio, a newbie might at 1:6, but until I somehow have hands of fire and the ears of a superhero, that puts me at $5 an hour pre-tax. There's only so many hours in the day, and I don't feel like you should have to entertain the idea of illegal drugs to keep up your work pace. By the way, if you use medications to cope with your job, and you're reading this, imagine me there in person, a kind hand on your shoulder, saying, "You need to double-check yourself, and make other arrangements." Consider me your guiding angel of employment. Ha ha, again, my friend. :P

So how do you balance the unpaid endeavor of, what they refer to in sales as "filling your pipeline" full of work, while also working enough to at least tread water, when it's already not enough?

I've gotten set up with one transcription site, where I'm averaging $5 / hour, and have gotten flagged for accuracy due to trying to hurry, and not being able to take the time to properly review my work, as well as a microtask site that pays $.01 for a 2 minute task, which I'm cool with, but unfortunately the math comes out to $.30 an hour... I'd have to be homeless, living at a shelter, working out of the library, and on food benefits, and not be a smoker (I'm not, but I have a similarly expensive coffee habit) for that to be worth it.

I feel like both incomes would get better if I spend more time working past being a newbie, but how do you decide what has potential, and what doesn't, and how long do you invest before you decide? At some point, you'll be sitting in the dark, with an eviction notice on your door, no water to flush your toilet, your hungry cats eyeballing your calves for tenderness, picking at work that obviously didn't reciprocate your affections. At what point do you say it's not worth it, and move on to something else, or do the unthinkable, and give up on the idea, to either do something less suitable, or at best, come back to it later??? Is it worth tracking time in a spreadsheet to figure it out, or is it something that can be done by gut instinct? And whose gut are we referring to? Mine is prone to being distracted by ice cream.

I guess we all go on some level of instinct, and I think that's what I need to do, too. My plan is to sign up for every website that I can get accepted to, take good notes on their rules and practices, take minimum notes on timing, so I have a general feel for how much I make per hour, and pick at some of the work for every website each day until I get a more firm feeling for which ones work best for me, and stop wasting my time on the lesser ones.

I hope in some way this also helps you, if you're in a similar situation. We definitely can't always do what we want, and we sometimes end up doing things we don't like, but misery and bitterness will eat you from the inside out, and in the end, will kill you. Why not make a calculated attempt at happiness?