Tag: Work

  • The Warning Signs

    Hi! It’s been a minute. Life’s been hectic. So much so that I’ve got a cautionary tale to tell, which involves me getting hired at a new job, starting work, and quitting all in the last week!

    Some of you may recall that I’ve been looking for a new gig since April of last year. If you’re new or unfamiliar, you can read all about my trials and tribulations from around that point and onward in the “Retail Therapy” section on this post. I had spent the year (or more…) learning more about programming and coding, but also desperately applying for any job that came my way. Anything that I figured I’d be able to do, anyway. I’m a 40-year-old college dropout with very few in-demand skills (working on that, obviously!), so it’s not exactly an easy path in what is already a challenging job market. The icing on the cake is that I also now live in an area of the country that has practically zero jobs unless I want to return to retail. There’s also manufacturing and factory work, but I passed out working behind a customer service desk at a big box store in this town, so I’m not so sure manual labor is going to be on the table for me either.

    In late March, my sister, MissFiasco, emailed me a job listing for a work-from-home role with a healthcare company. The title was “Radiology Scheduler.” It mentioned how much it paid — not much, but more than what any retail job in the area was dishing out — and as the title suggests, would involve scheduling patients for medical imaging and diagnostic procedures. It did involve talking to patients on the phone, which I honestly despise, but it didn’t necessarily sound like a call center, either. So I figured it would probably be okay. Not only would I get to work from home in my pajamas and start earning some dough again, but it also sounded like I would play a role in genuinely helping people, which is always a nice feeling. So I gave it a shot and sent them my resume.

    A couple of weeks into April, I received an email back from the company. They were interested in interviewing me! It was the first time anyone had even shown interest in me professionally since I went to talk to a temp agency in February with no success. Naturally, I booked the interview. And that’s when things started getting strange…

    My first interview was conducted by an AI chatbot. Yes, you read that correctly. My interview was basically conducted by ChatGPT or Copilot or whatever. It asked me some fairly standard questions and suggested that I be as thorough and detailed as possible because, if I passed this round, then I would be invited to interview again with a human representative. It was weird, but I kept going because… Well, because I needed a job. I did enough to impress Chad (a nickname MissFiasco and I gave to ChatGPT), so I progressed to the next interview. It was scheduled to be a 30-minute video chat, and I was advised that the dress would be business casual. I did my best to look presentable since I’m almost always dressed very casually, snapped a photo to my family’s group chat on Discord, and joined the Zoom meeting early and prepared.

    The selfie that jiggyflyjoe snapped before his interview!
    Photo of me looking my “best.” 🥴

    Much like the interview with Chad, the interview went well enough, but it still just felt odd. The woman that I was speaking to seemed highly indifferent throughout the entire conversation. On the other hand, I like to sprinkle in a little sarcasm or jokes here and there, so the contrast was a little jarring. I’m not one of those creepy dudebros who think that women always need to be warm and receiving, but man… She did not show even the slightest hint of a sense of humor. It was as if smiling were simply not allowed while on the clock. Regardless, the process continued afterward, and I was sent an offer letter by mid-May. An offer letter that invited me to accept the role of an “Engagement Specialist,” which I had not applied for. The shift that I had requested was also changed, and the compensation was a bit less than the radiology scheduling role. I emailed back the recruiter and inquired as to why I was being offered a position with hours and wages that I did not apply for. She simply stated that the Radiology Scheduler role was “no longer available.”

    This was my first major red flag.

    The interview with Chad and the subsequent recruiter were strange, but I brushed them off because I was desperate enough to get working. But this was the exact moment that I remember thinking, “I don’t know about this.” The vibes were off and, frankly, I felt that they had pulled a bait-and-switch on me. And in retrospect, I see now that this is when I should have declined the offer and dodged the bullet completely. But again, the siren song coming from incoming money was too strong. I signed the offer letter and, in return, they shipped me a computer with which to work from home. And the family rallied to help me prepare. To the point where my brother-in-law (aka MrFiasco) transformed a room in our home that had been serving as a storage room into a home office for me. Complete with an actual cubicle! I was getting nervous but excited, especially by my new workspace. I was no longer going to be crammed into a small corner of my bedroom, where my current desktop setup is! I was going to be an unstoppable workforce of one back here!

    An animated image of Brie Larson as Carol Danvers becoming the superhero Captain Marvel in the film of the same name.
    Okay, I’m not Captain Marvel unstoppable, but I felt pretty close.

    Last Thursday was my first day. I went through orientation and training on both Teams and Zoom, and learned that the company was effectively a healthcare call center. I cringe at those two words together because working for a call center is one of the last things I have ever had any desire to do. As I mentioned earlier, I despise speaking on the phone in the first place. But they informed us that we would only be making outbound phone calls to insurance members to try and convince them to schedule an in-home health assessment, which is where a nurse practitioner visits their home and reviews their overall health, medications, etc. My last office-based job that I had worked at for more than 8 years eventually threw me a phone and told me to play call center, but this company surprisingly had an entire automated phone system that included an actual script, and you were able to schedule the appointments in the same software! That seemed fairly easy and convenient. Maybe I could do this job! The trainers also seemed friendly and very knowledgeable. I won’t lie: The first three or four days were even kinda fun. I was digging it.

    That was until Day #5. I don’t know if my trainer was just having a spectacularly bad day, but there were a few moments throughout the morning where her friendliness seemed as though it was starting to wane. At one particular point, I was essentially told to stop taking notes on a topic and to start doing a quiz about the same topic instead. And then, earlier in the day, we were directed to complete an activity that involved us recording ourselves doing a practice phone call with yet another AI chatbot. When the AI chatbot broke down for numerous people in the training class and stopped letting us progress, assistance was not exactly forthcoming. And when the assistance finally did show up, it was entirely useless. By the time we went on our lunch break yesterday, I started feeling pretty triggered. I’ve described the feeling to my family multiple times now as feeling like workplace PTSD. My eagerness to keep learning and to try and make things work for this job withered away and was instantly replaced by a sense of panic and dread in the middle of my stomach. My spidey sense was tingling. I’d been here before.

    And in a moment of clarity, I came to the entire reality of the situation. This was a call center, I was a salesperson (there was even commission!), my higher-ups were unwilling to help, and I was once again going to be expected to address questions for people that I did not know the answers to. Furthermore, my target demographic was vulnerable elderly people who were likely being taken advantage of by their insurance policies anyway. We were instructed that these health assessments were yearly benefits that they receive for free, but as my famously inappropriate father likes to say, “there ain’t no free lunch.” And sure, the calls were mostly scripted, but we were also advised to “manage resistance” when folks tried declining the assessment, which also felt scummy. I quickly realized that I wasn’t digging it, after all.

    Then I quit! I was that guy who went to lunch and never came back. After I signed off, I packed up their computer and immediately shipped it back out to them this morning in the very same box it arrived in.

    CTA Image

    Jiggy’s Journal now has an AMA (Ask Me Anything) page! You got 🔥burning questions🔥 for me? Maybe a comment or suggestion? Check out the page here and submit everything that’s on your mind. Afterwards, I’ll respond in a future post!

    Ask Me Anything!

    And while I’m absolutely certain this was the correct decision to make, I’m disappointed to say the very least. Nobody knows how much I wanted to be a productive member of society again. My family has been extremely supportive for the most part, but I know that I’m a drain on them financially, so I think they’re at least a little disappointed in me, too. I know that I’m also exceptionally privileged to have enough of a support system currently in place that I’m granted the option of even considering leaving a job when I’m mentally in distress. Not everyone can do that, so it wasn’t a decision that I made lightly. I did try my best. I took several pages of handwritten notes throughout training, did my best to fully understand the company’s campaign that I’d been hired for, and adjusted everything else in my orbit to rotate around my new work schedule. Despite my gut instinct frequently trying to communicate to my brain that this wasn’t going to work.

    So my unemployment journey continues. I’m still working on coding. Maybe even refocusing on it a little more since I started to slack off on that a bit. Hopefully, I can eventually develop that skill into something employable. I’m still making web content, like always, for the love of it and because it earns me a little pocket change here and there. (By the way, have you subscribed to this publication? What about my Twitch channel?? Or maybe you’d like to buy me a cup of coffee??? 👀) I’m still open and looking for any other jobs that might surprise me and somehow won’t be completely soul-crushing. And otherwise, I’m chillin’ with my silly little games and shows. (Yo, Severance, Silo, and Foundation have been rocking my world lately. Get you some Apple TV+!)

    Let this also serve as a reminder to listen to your internal monologue! Trust your gut instincts! I understand that they aren’t always right, and maybe we are just cucumbers with anxiety, but your feelings are valid, and there is a reason why they are making you feel that way. Don’t ignore the warning signs! Otherwise, you might just unwittingly find yourself in a call center.

    In the meantime, you know if anyone’s hiring? If they aren’t completely drinking the corporate Kool-Aid, shoot me an email! We’ll be besties forever. ❤️

  • The Homesick Hoosier

    I used to hate being from Indiana.

    As a kid, I legitimately despised being from and living most of my life in a state that most people have never thought twice about. I grew up in a small, suburban town just south of Indianapolis, and while my childhood was pleasant enough, I had the great misfortune of growing into a weirdo. I was a weird kid, and I liked weird things, and I likely have at least an ounce of the ’tism that made me act and feel very awkward. None of that made me very popular among my fellow Hoosier children. Even though there have been a couple of chapters in my life where I’ve had a solid circle of friends, I’ve never really ever been Mr. Popularity. You know where I did find friends, though? Online. Friends who lived in really fun, exciting, or fancy-sounding places like New York or California, or even foreign countries! England, Australia, India, Sweden, Italy, Japan!

    Cole Sprouse as Jughead announcing that he is a weirdo.
    My condolences to Jughead!

    It’s not too hard to see why this weirdo spent a lot of time dreaming of ways to escape from Indy.

    FedEx Foundations 📦

    I think my perspective started changing around the time I got my job at the Indianapolis International Airport, working for the regional hub of FedEx Express. Back in 2006, I was in my early twenties and pretty much only making beer money flipping burgers. My older brother had been working at FedEx for a few years at that point, so when he suggested putting in an application, I was more than happy to do so! By the way, I wouldn’t normally advise working with family, but he had also mentioned that the facility was pretty massive, so the chances we would actually run into each other while working were kinda slim, so I was chill with giving it a shot. The company took about two months to give me a call back, but once they offered me a job that June, I jumped on it.

    I’ve always been a tiny bit concerned that trading the smell of fries and onion rings on my clothes for jet fuel was probably going to cause me to develop some sort of terminal illness, but it was a trade that I was more than willing to take at the time!

    FedEx was an important chapter for me, though, for a lot of reasons. It gave me my first “adult” responsibility outside of my sheltered little “small-town” life thus far. And some of those responsibilities were big. I started out just sorting packages and rewrapping packages that had broken open upstairs in a conveyor belt “matrix” of sorts that scanned the bar codes on mailing labels and then routed them to their appropriate destinations afterward. But the responsibility seemed to increase tenfold by the time I transferred to a position working outdoors on the ramp. Driving tractor-trailers, pulling long strings of huge aluminum containers filled with sorted packages, and trying not to hit the sometimes actively taxiing multi-million dollar aircraft with any of it in the process. It was stressful, and that wasn’t even half of the job! Those kids (and a few old dogs, too!) who are still out there doing that job, running heavy machinery and loading and unloading aircraft in practically every imaginable type of inclement weather situation, get the highest regards from yours truly. Especially since they’re only doing it for like $16 an hour!

    WRTV 6 in Indianapolis reporting on the Indy Hub, my former stomping grounds!

    I eventually became a “ramp agent,” a title that required me to go through several rounds of interviews and get a decent pay bump. My professional development skills weren’t the only things that grew while I was at FedEx, though. I made friends in my various work groups, many of whom I’m still in contact with and consider some of the best friends I’ve ever had. I attended numerous parties, festivals, concerts, graduations, trips out of state, at least four weddings, and two funerals. We did dinners, went out for drinks, had coffee or brunch on Sundays, holiday ugly sweater parties, retro-themed pub crawls, and formed a beer club at Shallo’s (one of Indy’s best hidden gems, by the way!). A few of us even got to join in Super Bowl festivities together during Super Bowl XLVI back in 2012 when Indy played host! These were the days when I felt young and fun and maybe only a little intoxicated.

    I had quite a few personal milestones during this era, too. Since the “Express” division of FedEx operates as an airline, they also used to have a perk where we could purchase standby seats on passenger flights through Southwest and other airlines for ridiculously low prices. Seriously, during a week of PTO, I flew from Indy to Arizona to visit some friends for like $75 round-trip! Is that even possible anymore with today’s prices? It was my first time flying alone, however, so even though I’d been an adult for a few good years, it still felt like a big deal. During this period, I also bought (and paid off!) my first car. It was a 2006 Chevy Impala that needed tons of work done on it after I got it, but it served me well up until the pandemic, when everyone stopped going places. That same Impala is still in the family. We had to tow that bitch all the way to Kansas when we moved, so needless to say, it’s still a hoopty, too!

    “How Cosmopolitan!” 🍸

    As much as I still love and appreciate FedEx for what it was, at the end of my tenure there, I had learned from experience that I’m not supervisor material. I may know the ropes of a particular job really well, but I’m not someone who can execute all of my job functions while also keeping tabs on what everyone else is doing. Nor did I appreciate taking the heat for what others failed to do. So by mid-2014, some friends from outside FedEx started helping me plan my next move, and that meant completely flipping the script.

    In October of that year, I found myself getting employed by a local office that handled drug and alcohol testing for employers. A few good friends who already worked for the company vouched for me when I applied, so it made the hiring process a breeze. I was already acquainted with two of the three people who interviewed me for the job, so it was also the most comfortable job interview I’ve ever completed. And when the HR lady took me around to introduce me to everyone on my first day, it was almost comical that many of my new co-workers had the same response: “Oh yeah, we already know him!” So I went from working overnight with airplanes and boxes to data entry and paper pushing during the day.

    The office was located in a fairly convenient spot in downtown Indianapolis. There was an office kitchen with free coffee! I had my own cubicle and a phone on my desk with my very own extension! And parking was free, which struck me as a rare perk among folks who live and work in urban environments! The first few weeks at this job felt impossibly cool. I was doing a big boy professional job in an office with a computer and a phone and coffee! Isn’t that like the poster image of an American working man? Now I was really living the life! It felt like I was living an episode of Mad Men or something. To put it into perspective, a former FedEx co-worker once asked my brother how I was liking the new job, and after he described all of this to them, they replied with a two-word exclamation:

    “How cosmopolitan!”

    Christina Hendricks in Mad Men giving someone a judgmental glance.
    Literally the rest of the office staff while I was hyping up my new job.

    Throughout my twenties and thirties, and between working at FedEx and in this new office role for a majority of those years, my distaste for Indy started turning into something else. Eventually, I found myself growing fond of it. When big things happened for the city, like hosting the aforementioned Super Bowl or the annual Indy 500, it was a big thing for everyone. You couldn’t help but develop a little bit of pride in being from the Circle City. It was a blast whenever I got the time to get out and about in the city with my pals. I discovered new parts of the town that I didn’t know about before, including the city’s “cultural districts” like Fountain Square, the Wholesale District, and Broad Ripple Village. These are the places you could find most of Indy’s vintage, artsy, and independent restaurants, shops, and entertainment venues. Who doesn’t love the opportunity to shop at Silver in the City or go party at The Vogue? That honestly describes some of the weekends I’ve had in Indy.

    Indianapolis is extremely underrated by the rest of the country. The entire state is often overlooked as “flyover country” to most of the population on the coasts. Honestly, I can kinda see why. Indiana is well-known for its miles and miles of corn and soybean fields. But it was also a really special place that is growing and creating its own cultural identity. Areas of the city, like Fountain Square, were being revitalized and were slowly moving away from being the kinds of places my family used to worry about me getting stabbed at. Buildings that were previously abandoned and run down were being transformed into funky spaces with stories to tell. A cross-section that mirrors Indy’s own mixture of young and hip with classic elegance and rural simplicity.

    I wound up moving away from Indiana in early 2023. That was when we decided to join my sister, her husband, and their son out here in small-town Kansas. Two years later, I’m still trying to find my appreciation for this different kind of lifestyle. Moving so far away has allowed me to grow and spread my wings in different ways. And I love being closer to my family, and the convenience of being able to see them whenever I want is paramount, especially as the world grows weirder and more frightening every single day. But Indiana will forever be my home. I miss it deeply. It’s the place that raised me.

    And I would kill for just a slice from Jockamo Pizza right about now!

  • If You Build It, Will They Come?

    ℹ️
    Jiggy’s Journal recently experienced technical trouble, and some content was damaged. Fortunately, I was able to reconstruct said content from the emailed versions, but many of the reference links and animated GIFs in this post were lost. My apologies for the inconvenience!

    For the last few weeks, I’ve been putting the final touches on a web project that I’ve wanted to do for a long time. And it may not seem like it, but Jiggy’s Journal is actually part of it!

    To explain the entire story, I probably need to rewind quite a bit. And to be fair, this got pretty lengthy! So if you already know me and a large part of my most recent chapters, I’ve toggled the “previously on…” portions of today’s episode. 😉

    From Indiana to Kansas🗺️

    You might recall that I’m originally from a small town just outside of Indianapolis, IN. It was small in the sense that my high school’s graduating class in 2003 had just over 200 students, but it never truly felt small because it still only took me about 25-45 minutes to get into downtown Indy depending on traffic. Fast forward to a few years ago when my sister, who lived in an actual small town in a pretty rural part of Kansas with her husband and my nephew, started having some scary health issues. Our father did a couple of stints in the hospital, too. We all collectively decided it was probably in our best interests if all of us were in the same area. Not only would we be around to bolster each other’s quality of life, we also just generally would be around to see each other more. And since their return to Indiana was not in the cards, we packed up in early 2023 and relocated. It’s where I live today.

    I was relieved that my employer at the time was willing to allow me to continue working for them remotely once we made the move, but ultimately, it didn’t work out. They had tried transitioning me to a more “call center” type of work. Ordinarily, I am excellent at customer service and even enjoy being able to help people, but dealing with angry people who were demanding answers to some of the company’s services that I had nearly zero knowledge of wound up being my kryptonite. I resigned and shipped their laptop back to them. And then experienced a health crisis of my own.

    Emergency Pitstop💉

    In mid-2023, only weeks after I had left my job, I started experiencing some abdominal pain. I’m really good about eating things that aren’t great for me, so some stomach rumbles weren’t uncommon, but this seemed to persist and it didn’t want to go away. We were initially convinced that it might have been a UTI, but just to be on the safe side, my brother-in-law took me to a clinic to get everything checked out. The staff at that clinic wound up suggesting that I report to the nearby hospital ER instead. That ER staff wound up admitting me after doing some imaging.

    Putting it mildly, I was terrified. Up until this point, I had never had anything result in hospitalization. No major injuries or illnesses. At most, I’d had routine outpatient procedures done, but nothing that would require me to stay overnight. When they told me I was then on my way to emergency surgery to remove my appendix, I was VERY alarmed. I even asked my brother-in-law to bring my dear old dad to see me. Mostly to help calm me down, but also just in case it was the last time he ever saw me. Dramatic? Probably. Especially since I have seen enough Grey’s Anatomy to know that an appendectomy—fondly referred to on the show (and I’m hoping in real life because it’s adorable) as an “appy”—is one of the first surgeries that new surgeons get to perform on their own because it’s so basic and routine. I was likely in good hands—or fine enough hands, at the very least. But I still wanted my only living parent there. Like a toddler still wants his blankie.

    After I was rid of the surgery pain and the drain of nastiness they had installed in my stomach, I really just had to deal with the other major diagnosis I received while at the hospital: Diabetes. It’s not entirely surprising since nearly my entire immediate family is diabetic. But it did mean a whole new world of having to manage it. Even though Ozempic is all the rage now, daily injections and having to limit your consumption of sugar and carbs are still not fun. Once I had recovered from the appy and started on my diabetic meds, I knew it was time to face reality: I needed a new job.

    Subscribe to Jiggy’s Journal

    Retail Therapy🛍️

    I came to find that, after working in office administration and customer service for the same company for over eight years, the job market has kinda dried up. You can still find thousands upon thousands of job openings listed on Indeed and LinkedIn, but most never even respond to your application because they are “ghost jobs” that aren’t even actually hiring. Also presenting a problem is the fact that I’m living in a much less populated area than I was before. In most circumstances, the jobs just don’t exist here. And you can basically forget trying to find a remote job unless you have very specific skills or you want to do call center work, which is exactly what I had already tried to get away from.

    So later in the summer, I went to work retail at the only local big box store. The pay was better than I expected it to be (although still terrible), but I figured that I could run a cash register for 8 hours a day. It didn’t sound like rocket science, so why not? Plus, we got a meager employee discount! And health insurance, which was now obviously necessary. And I genuinely liked most of my co-workers! It was great to actually get acquainted with other people in the area since I didn’t know anyone here aside from my family. Even the customers were nice for the most part! That was particularly surprising since I had come from a job where most clients were already angry at us before they even picked up the phone. I was initially hired as part-time help, but my manager offered me full-time hours after only a few weeks and eventually asked if I’d be interested in learning how to work at the customer service desk, so I guess I was doing a decent enough job.

    In retrospect, I probably should have declined the service desk position. It was there that I really started experiencing the ugly and sometimes horrifyingly ignorant side of customer service again. Sure, there were plenty of pleasant people, but a majority of the work done at the service desk was with customers who were deeply unhappy about one thing or another. And in recent years, I’ve learned that I’m someone who will generally match the energy of those around me. I think most people are like that. It’s probably where the old adage about luring flies with honey instead of vinegar comes from. If you come to me with a friendly demeanor, I’m much more inclined to assist you than if you’re a total Karen. Shit, I’m practically thrilled to help you if you’re kind to me. So, in most cases, it probably isn’t the greatest idea to have me assist someone who wants to get in my face and yell about how I’m “just a f**king cashier” and that he didn’t like my attitude. (Actual true story, by the way!)

    My time in retail clearly came to an abrupt ending in the spring of last year. The rude customers started getting to me mentally. I just didn’t want to get up and go force myself to get berated by strangers anymore. I wasn’t doing much better physically. My legs were practically dead from mostly standing in one spot cashing people out all day every day. It’s been almost a year since I left that job and I still feel like I permanently have that Meredith Grey walk. And that’s not even to mention the time that I literally passed out while on shift behind that service desk. The reasoning is still technically a mystery, but I suspect that low blood sugar had something to do with it since I hadn’t eaten beforehand. I stopped taking care of myself and it was beginning to show. So I stepped away.

    Outgrowing Academics🍎

    The whole job search here continues to elude me. As I stated in the previous sections, it has been almost a year since I left the retail gig, and I haven’t found another source of income. I’ve sent out probably hundreds of applications and gone to a couple of interviews, but nothing else has panned out. Thankfully, my family has kept me afloat and away from being forced into actual bankruptcy and homelessness, but I know that that can’t last forever. That’s ultimately why I decided to go back to the root of what interests me: Technology!

    I went to college back in Indiana for a short while to study Software Development. I’ve always been more of a “creative” type of person, but I’m objectively awful at the more “artsy” fields. I’ve had a few successes with projects in computer graphics and photography, but I was terrible in actual high school art classes. I can’t draw to save my life and don’t even ask me to paint or watercolor. We’ll just wind up with a big mess. So I needed to be able to pour my creative side into something practical and developing software by writing code seemed perfect! Not only was I constantly thinking of cool ideas for apps and web services that I already used, but I’ve been obsessed with video games since I was a small child. Developing my own video game or working in the gaming industry sounded amazing to me. So I started out learning about networking, databases, and even writing a little bit of code in Python! I was having a blast!

    Those official studies came to an abrupt end when my advisor suggested that I change my major. The Software Development program had several math courses on top of the remedial algebra courses they were already making me take as part of my general education requirement. And if you know me, you know math is my nemesis. I even made my sister tally up my score for me during a family game of Yahtzee! just this weekend. Math is not a friend of mine. I can write computer code, but math? I don’t know her. So I did eventually change my major to Visual Communications, where I spent a few more semesters wasting a boatload of money but genuinely enjoying my time in classes like Photography, Video and Sound, and Intro to Computer Graphics. I loved taking all of those courses and I learned a lot about skills that I could put to good use in my existing hobbies like content creation and streaming on Twitch. But honestly, at this point, I was just floating in the wind with school. I didn’t know what I was doing anymore aside from just taking a bunch of classes that sounded fun.

    After the move to Kansas, I transferred my studies to the University of Kansas (KU) and became a virtual Jayhawk for a year. Going from a two-year to a four-year university meant even more rigorous studying and it seemed like they were padding my schedule with required courses that were still wasting my time and were, quite frankly, kinda boring me. So I decided to step away from my formal education entirely after that first year here.

    Back to Basics💁

    And here we are now! Where I’m finding myself both unemployed and a college dropout. Don’t I sound like a real winner?

    I’m continuing to send out my résumé and fill out job applications online in case I can manage to snag one of those elusive remote positions. I’m told that they do exist, despite my best efforts. In the meantime, I’ve decided to pick up where I left off with my web and software education without the rigid institution behind it. I’ve very slowly but carefully been working my way through freeCodeCamp’s completely free certification courses. I’ve been having a bit of trouble wrapping my brain around JavaScript, so in the meantime, I’ve also taken on a few other tech-related projects. That includes building out my very own server!

    This publication—Jiggy’s Journal, the Ghost instance that powers it, and even the automated emails subscribers get from it—are all now living pieces of www.jiggyflyjoe.com/! And trust me, there has been a massive learning curve with trying to figure out how to do all of that. Including several little snafus with the domain and its nameservers that had me yanking my hair out for days. I was thrilled when I finally got everything up and running. It was a big achievement for me! I even decided to write and code my little main page with information about me and links to all the places you can find me. Now, when you navigate to www.jiggyflyjoe.com/, the page you are greeted with is 100% hand-made by me!

    Screenshot of jiggyflyjoe's website on desktop.
    Screenshot of jiggyflyjoe’s website on desktop.

    The page is written entirely in HTML and CSS, so it is admittedly a little “basic” compared to what I used before to simply drag and drop elements on a digital canvas over on Carrd. But as someone aspiring to work in the tech or gaming industries, I figured a website fully made and configured by my own hands was probably mandatory. And hey, its design and interactivity and overall awesomeness can and will eventually grow as I continue to learn, right?

    The possibilities are endless with what else I can self-host on my server, too. My nephew has already been deeply invested in digitizing our large DVD collection that is otherwise just collecting dust. Perhaps I could spin up a media server? Maybe just a private file management service for me and the family? Perhaps we could migrate from our current family chat app to a private one on the server? I could always try my hand at hosting a forum for my web visitors, too! Trust that I’m always on the lookout for a new project! Plus, I’ve still got those JavaScript lessons on the back burner that I really need to get back to before they start bubbling over!

    The “TL;DR” of it all is this: I may not currently be in school or have a job, but I’m still learning and doing actual work. I’m spending my days beefing up my employable skills as much as I possibly can. I can only hope that eventually, the right opportunity comes calling.