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RE: Have you ever had to Start Over?
Just kind of catching up here after being out of the loop for a couple of days. Man that is big news that you guys are shutting down the business. Where you are mentally at right now probably sums up how I have felt on and off for several years always asking "What is the next step?....etc."
Just the struggle of wondering if you should try to get a job working for someone else at this point is a heavy enough burden in itself.
That is cool you want to do some traveling and thanks for the shout out man. I'll send you an e-mail.
Hey buddy what's up. Yeah so this has all come upon me pretty quickly over the past couple weeks here.
Mentally it's kind of funny, there's so many different issues at play. Of course you have the obvious what am I gonna do for money next, but even more so than that it's kind of a wake up call to what do I really want to do with my life, what kind of life do I want to live, etc, really bigger picture questions.
It's so easy in life to kind of fall into a routine, you wake up go to work, workout, eat, hangout with friends, back to work do it all over again, etc and its just so easy to fall into that and not really think what am I really doing, what kind of life do I want to carve out so part of me is a little bit anxious and excited that I essentially have a fresh start here, and at the same time that's overwhelming.
I really have zero desire to go get a job. If it was easier to become a teacher in my state I may consider that, I've taught after school programs and stuff, its rewarding work and the summers and holidays off is attractive, I have two cousins who are teachers and their overall lifestyle is appealing, teachers in my area are paid very well too, granted they've been doing it for years but they're making 100k each as gym teachers.
Outside of that I've considered if I wanted to just try to scale and grow some hustles I have merch, smaller shopify stores, youtube, affiliate marketing, a forum, etc. While I think I could earn a decent income doing that with anything thats not a full fledged business it sometimes feels like everything is temporary and your having to juggle several projects while keeping an eye on what hte next thing is because when I'm just hustling I feel like things have like a 6 month to year and a half lifespan so its always onto the next thing.
I've thought about getting a real estate license. I've thought about becomming and ISO and selling merchant processing, I have a lot of experience in the space as a user and especially in the high risk realm.
If I were single I feel like I'd be weighing different options maybe getting out of the country and doing the nomad thing or doing something a little crazier. I do have a girlfriend, two dogs and a house so to some extent that ties me down a little bit.
I guess that's the what's next part.
Aside from that there's also other little things at play in my head. Despite my girlfriend who refers to me as a robot who has no feelings lol, I actually have a hard time with change. I think every job I've left, every house I've moved out of I've secretely cried after doing so lol, dont tell her. I know there's all the cliches about a door closes another opens and be happy it happenned not that its over and all that halmark shit lol, but to me it's always kind of difficult leaving something behind, knowing that a chapter or era is over, things will never be like that again, etc.
I'm also grateful for what I have though. I've managed to put away some money over these past few years, the business has some money in the bank my partner and I will split up, and while this part is still in the works, there isnt a buyer but I'm finalizing a deal where basically I'm going to sell my brand and customer lists and for a fairly substantial period of time were doing a revenue split. That's a real wild card in terms of what that winds up equating to ie how well will it be tracked, will my customers move to this new company or were they loyal to me, all that type of stuff but at least its something.
I tend to not be able to relax when things are unsettled so these past few weeks have been stressful and the next couple probably will as well sweating things until deals are finalized and then the headache of paying all the bills, closing all our accounts and service and kind of tying up lose ends. After that plan on taking a little time off to relax and recharge, after that probably give myself at least until beginning of 2019 to mess around with some different stuff and see what I can get going and at that point kind of try to seriously figure out what I'm gonna do.
Question for you becaues I know you do your own thing. What do you do for health insurance if anything? My business partner handled getting ours setup and our business pays it so nothing out of my pocket so not really something I've had to deal with. Curious if I should do Obamacare or individual plan or whatever the heck they are calling it these days or if I sould try to get a 10 hour a week job at Jewel Osco just for insurance, thats one thing I need to figure out.
Anyhow, sorry for the novel man, that's kind of my rant and thinking out loud a bit.
Yeah man it is a lot to think about and can be stressful for sure to just figure things out. At least this will give you some time to sort of figure a few things out. I'm pretty blown away with how much you are saying your friends are making being a teacher. My parents used to be teachers and then they switched careers and then ended up going back to teaching for a little bit and the pay wasn't that great at all. Even though they had a little bit of teaching years racked up. Also here in Arizona it isn't very good and last school years the teachers went on strike for a week or two.
When it comes down to the insurance stuff it can get ridiculous. Most of the Obamacare approved plans will cost you a ridiculous amount. One year I paid $2,000 in premiums just to have some shit ball plan that had a $5,500 deductible so good luck with that one. Probably if you worked 10 hours a week you probably wouldn't be offered health insurance. You would probably have to work at least 35 hours per week at least per week.
Yeah the teacher pay thing is so crazy from place to place and I'm sure in my area it's well above average. My cousins teach in the western suburbs which is a more affluent area and pays teachers really well. A few years ago they both got their masters paid for by the school, I believe their school even had the professors come to the school so they didn't even have to leave just stayed an extra hour or two after school each day and for doing that got a huge pay bump. That's a whole different issue to discuss, I believe I've heard that there's almost no increase in effectiveness of teachers or performance of students because of that so in a sense seems like a waste of money to spend god knows how much money to pay for a gym teacher to get their masters degree and then give them a pay bump after you've paid for them to do it, seems kinda dumb to me but that's the system here. The district they teach in is in a city that was voted #1 place to live a couple years back so definitely not typical.
I remember my mom was subbing down in Charleston SC when she was living there and she was making $7.50, minimum wage is $7.25, thats crazy. I realize its just a sub but here in my area I think they make minimum $100 a day I think $150 in some districts, my dad was doing it a little bit this past year, but yeah definitely goes to show the difference between teaching in some states. Chicago public schools offer a program where anyone with a bachelors degree can go through a bootcamp type program for a month during summer, then be mentored by a teacher for a year or two and have a teacher oversee the work your doing and a bunch of tests and you can become a teacher without going through the whole traditional student teaching thing. They start you off at something like 48k which isn't terrible and good benefits but seems like a lot of hoops to jump through. I know some other states however that have teacher shortages, florida and some others come to mind will literally take anyone with a bachelors adegree and many will even pay a downpayment on your house or a year of rent if your your having to relacate, not sure if those programs are still in place but something I was looking into years ago.
As far as insurance yeah seems like not a lot of options. I'll have to look into the plans. In some senses even if its a ripoff, if at some point it covers major issues it may be worth the piecec of mind knowing if I get hit by a car I'm not fucked for life financially but if the plans are that bad it may be worth it just to bank that money and pay out of pocket if necessary. I thought the 10 hours a week was pretty optimistic but I do know a guy who owns a bagel shop and works at jewel I think about 15 hours per week just for the insurance although he has been there forever, not sure how keen they are to hire people these days who just want to work the minimum to collect insurance.
Anyhow, hopefully I should have an agreement about this deal tomororw and then just finalizing the paperwork and having lawyers handle the rest and then a few weeks of winding down and then off to the races. I'll definitely make some content about everything here when my schedule clears up a bit.
I've been a bit distracted and not as engaged in steemit lately but hopefully in the comming weeks as my schedule clears up a bit I can kinda reconnect with you and everyone on here
Yeah that is crazy. One thing I was going to do a long time ago was go through the paperwork to be a substitute teacher here in Arizona but I never actually did it and at various times I wished I would have.