Tag Archives: #being unemployed

A to Z: International Living

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Today’s post for the A to Z Challenge is International Living (IL). It’s a magazine that I’ve been subscribing to for around 30 years (I love it- it’s so inspiring!).

I’ve always loved to travel. Even as a baby, living in a cabover camper on the back of dad’s pickup truck. When I got the chance to sail around the world on a couple of traditional sailing ships in high school I was hooked.

Schooner Ariadne

Schooner Ariadne

I wanted to sail around the world and get paid for it! Hopefully I could satisfy my wanderlust that way.

I have been able to do some traveling by sea, through my work as a professional mariner over the last 30+ years. But not nearly enough.

I want to move overseas. Permanently.

International Living has dozens of articles every month describing how others (mostly from US and Canada) have been able to make the move. It gives me all kinds of ideas. Sometimes I actually hurt over wanting it so bad.

IL publishes stories about people who’ve moved overseas and retired, bought property, started businesses (all kinds). People write about how much easier it is to do all of those things in places where the cost of living is so much lower and the bureaucracy is less burdensome (usually). They all mention how much less stress there is and how they’re able to really enjoy day to day life for a change.

I’ve just never felt that I could make it work. That I personally had the skills (and/or money) to be able to last for months, years, decades in foreign lands without being able to work (legally). Yes, I’m sure I could probably find some kind of under the table work (I’ve done it before), but I’m much more cautious now than I was at 16. I don’t want to worry about being deported  and shipped back ‘home’. 🙁

I don’t feel comfortable with just dropping everything and leaving. With not having any money. Money is freedom in my mind. It allows for options. I’m not sure I want to travel as a backpacker, staying in hostels, etc. (in fact I’m pretty sure I don’t). I want to be sure I can at least be safe. I want to be able to move immediately if things start going wrong.

Then again, things here at home are not going very well, in fact it’s becoming unbearable. The more time I spend at home, not working, the more time I have to think. The more time to watch what’s going on in the news, etc. I don’t think things here are going to get any better. I feel like I need to get out while I still can.

I have been trying to follow some of the suggestions in IL for years. Things like find some source of independent income, multiple income sources, learn useful skills, find portable ‘jobs’, etc.

I’ve gone to some of their events over the years. Retire Overseas conferences, Fund Your Life conferences, travel writing and photography courses, etc. I’ve gathered up a lot of great information and met some really cool people, but still haven’t managed to do much to actually make a move. 🙁

I have been buying and renovating property for rental income since 2001. At this point, they mostly pay for themselves. There is only one that still needs supplemental income from my job. Since I have not been able to find work for the last 6+ months, I’ve had to put that one up for sale. I just can’t afford it if I’m not able to find work. Once that one is sold, I should be able to live on savings and rental income for at least a couple of years.

NOT the one I’m selling!

I’m thinking this would be the best time for me to move.

I have no job, I have nothing tying me down. I’ll have enough cash to live on for a couple of years when my house is sold. I even have a ‘useful skill’ now, since I just got certified to teach English as a foreign language (TEFL).

The only thing holding me back now is FEAR.

Now how to get rid of that (along with all the stuff I’ll need to pack up and get rid of so I can leave my house to the renters)?

A to Z: Global Orion

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Another post today for the A to Z Challenge (I’m trying to catch up) is on the Global Orion. The Global Orion is a really sweet dive support vessel (DSV)- Norwegian built. When I worked on board, a few years ago, we were kept pretty busy. I hope she’s still working and not laid up like so many others have been since the plunge in the price of oil.

Global Orion

Global Orion

I was chief mate on there for a short time. I enjoyed working there a lot. I had a great crew to work with. I still keep in touch with some of them (on Facebook mostly). I like working with the divers and ROVs. It keeps things interesting, much more interesting than the drilling rigs.

I really hope work will pick up soon. I’m going nuts hanging around the house for so long, never knowing when I’ll get called out to go to work. Never able to make plans of any sort. It’s very stressful. Much more stressful than anything I’ve ever done at work!

A to Z: Ensco

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I’m doing the A to Z Challenge. To post everyday (except Sundays) through April, one for each letter of the alphabet. Today’s post is Ensco.

Ensco is a drilling company. I’ve spent a couple of years working on a few of their drilling rigs. I’ve never been hired directly by Ensco (tho I wouldn’t have minded that). I was working as an independent contractor. So when they needed someone to fill in, they would call and I would go out to work.

I first started with them on a couple of rig moves on the Deep Ocean Mendocino (later renamed DS-5). Later I was hurricane master on the Ensco 8506 (semisubmersible). I brought it out of the shipyard to get it checked out and then on to it’s first well.

Ensco 8506

Ensco 8506

THAT was a great job! I really enjoyed my time there and was sorry it ended.

Ensco found enough of their own people so that they didn’t need to use fill ins anymore. I think that’s the same for every company in the oilfield at this point.

I’m sure most people are hoping the gas price doesn’t go back up anytime soon. I’m one of the few who’s hoping it does. I probably won’t be going back to work until it does. 🙁

How to Stay Motivated

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How to stay motivated? I have no idea!

I have been trying, for years now, to find some way to earn a living on my own. I’ve known for a long time that working offshore was not going to last. I did my very best to prepare. I saved all I could. I invested the best way I could figure out how (stocks, real estate, training, etc). I spent a lot of time trying to learn photography and writing. I started blogging. I even went to Mexico to get certified to teach English as a foreign language (TEFL).

I’ve spent my life working at sea. I’ve earned the highest license there is. I’ve been laid off the ships since mid-September 2015. I haven’t had a single interested response for any of the thousands of resumes I’ve sent or applications I’ve filled out. I don’t expect to see any until the price of oil goes up quite a bit and stabilizes. Maybe then I can go back to work. IF my licenses are still good.

I’m trying everything I can think of to earn income even if I can’t get back to work. Some are predicting the oil field won’t recover for 3-5 YEARS, if ever! That means I’ve got to make my savings last for the rest of my life. At the rate I’m going now, they won’t last even for the rest of this year.

In the meantime, I’ve been working as hard as I can to make my blog interesting and figure out how to ‘monetize’ it. I’ve done all I can to promote it, but there is some issue with it where it’s keeping people from easily being able to ‘like’ a post or ‘follow’ the blog. I can’t figure out what’s wrong with it on my own and I can’t find anyone who can help me. It doesn’t help that my computers have been on the fritz for a couple of months and my internet has been completely out for the last few days.

I’ve also been trying to work on my photography. I would like to find a way to promote them to the world and hopefully someone out there would like one enough to buy one every once in a while. It seems the universe is totally against that idea!

From some sick, greedy bastards hacking my thumb drive and blackmailing me to get my photos back, to having my computer refuse to open the photos so I can see them because it’s stuffed full, to now having almost none of them transferred to the new hard drive! I’m also unable to download the photo editing software I use (Lightroom), since the internet keeps dropping off before the program finishes downloading.

So, I am getting incredibly frustrated. It seems for every thing I try to do, there is another roadblock set in front of me. I’m having a hell of a hard time trying to stay motivated to do anything. I’m just trying to find a way to survive financially before I lose everything I’ve worked so hard for all these years.

I’m about to give up on getting the computer to work until the modem comes. Does anybody have any suggestions for how to promote, or sell photography online? I’ve tried Craigslist and Varage Sale, no response yet. Trying to figure out eBay but would rather avoid that one.

If anybody has any ideas on selling photos, please let me know! These 2 are just a couple of examples. I’ve got thousands! Look around my blog for more, almost all of them here are my photos (I occasionally have to find something on google).

More Computers

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I know it must seem like I don’t do much but bitch about my computer, but it’s incredibly frustrating!

This morning I’ve already spent over 3 hours trying to complete a job that should take no more than 10 minutes!

My regular computer is in the shop. I was supposed to get it back 2 days ago. Yesterday they told me it wouldn’t be ready til (at least) Monday. That one does work slightly better than this one.

Since I can’t find any work offshore, pretty much everything I need to do is online. Look for a job, edit my photographs, upload photographs, write, research articles, research where and how to query articles, etc.

I’m so pissed off right now I feel like smashing the computer with the biggest hammer I can find!

Busy Tuesdays

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Tuesdays are always the busiest days of the week for me. Today was no exception. I woke up early (0430). I had to leave the house by 0530 to get to the training center on time. It’s all the way up in NW Houston, it takes me about an hour and a half if there’s traffic.

I spent the morning role playing for one of the training sessions. We have more and more of these required courses every year. This one was to assess how the trainee would handle emergency situations at work.

As a role player, I act the part of one of the bridge team. Today my job was to keep track of what was done as things progressed. I had to make note of the times certain things were done, for example: what time did the incident start, what time did they call for muster, was anybody missing, who, was help called, when, were the fire pumps started, etc.

It’s actually a pretty interesting ‘job’. I enjoy it. It will definitely help me when it’s my turn to take the class.

I stopped on the way home to get rid of some of my books at the Half Price Books store. Hard to believe, but they only offered me $6 for 9 (very good condition and great to read) books! I took 2 of them back after that. I’ll donate them to the library.

I got home in time to make a few phone calls (check to see if any news on the job that was supposed to start on March 4th, figure out why the pharmacy gave me the wrong prescription yesterday, call and message about another possible job). No satisfaction on any of them, I’ll have to try again tomorrow.

I went for my daily walk. The weather is still really nice and cool. I wish it lasted longer. We’re supposed to have another cold front come through tomorrow so it might last a few days more. 🙂

I checked out my plants. My lemon tree is blooming like crazy and is already making tiny little lemons. A bunch of them got blown off in the wind today. The lime tree didn’t have so much damage, but it’s right up next to the house. I’ve got 4-5 strawberries that look like they’ll be ready for picking in a few more days. I’ll have to keep a close eye out to get them before the birds do.

Came in and tried to check my email, in between the internet dropping off every few minutes. Nothing too important in the mail (nothing about work).

Off to the weekly Campaign for Liberty meeting for our usual political discussion. Last week we had a new guy show up. He had some interesting things to say. He sounded pretty hard core socialist to me, but we did agree on a lot of things (corporations have too much power, GMO labeling, fiat money, sky high debt levels). I have to admire him for sticking around for the entire meeting and holding his own when everybody else was on the opposite side on a lot of issues. Sorry to say, he didn’t come back tonight. 🙁

Too bad. We really need to work together to find a way to fix what’s wrong. We really all do agree on a lot of issues but it seems like we just can never focus on that. We always wind up fighting over the few little things we disagree on. We’ll never win the real fight if we can’t figure out that we should not be fighting each other, we need to concentrate on the real enemy.

We’re going to try again to get the word out about our weekly meetings and to inform people about some of the concerns we have. It’s hard. We’re still a very small group and everybody is always so busy. Nobody really has any time to concentrate on this stuff and we have a lot of things we’re involved in (community garden, radios, GMOs, etc).

I promised to make a Facebook page. I hope I can remember how to do that. 😉

I hope to heck I’ll be at work next Tuesday! If not, I’ll go to painting class instead of role playing, they don’t have anything else scheduled up there til April 11th. I hope I don’t have to wait that long to go to work again.

The Call

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I saw this post on Facebook today and thought to myself “yep, that’s about right.”

I never thought I’d be this upset about being out of work, I’ve been through a couple of busts in the oilfield before and prepared for this one as best I could. I’m a lot better off than most people who’ve been laid off over the last year. But after 6 months without even a couple of days offshore, the stress is getting to me. It’s hard to think straight when financial pressure is always nagging at the back of your mind.

I think we’d ALL feel about like this guy when we get the call. 🙂

Motivation

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Hmmm. How to get motivated when you’re not?

I just realized it’s been a few days since I posted here. It seems like the days flew by. Not that I’ve been all that busy. I haven’t been. In fact, I’ve been dragging around like a lump on a log trying to get motivated to do something.

Anything!

I was supposed to go to work last Friday. I didn’t. I finally got ahold of the guy I’ve been talking to about work yesterday and he told me that now he has ‘no idea’ when this job might really start. 🙁

Since then I’ve been trying to figure out how in the hell I’m going to be able to make my finances last. I’ve been blasting through my savings and I can’t even figure out where the money is going!

Anybody have any suggestions?

Home For Now

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I made it home OK Sunday. I was too tired to do anything but pass out. Monday morning I spent all day in Houston, mostly waiting around, to complete my UKOG physical so I could go to work. That was supposed to happen tonight.

It didn’t. 🙁

 

Just Jot It January: 2016

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Today’s prompt for Just Jot It January is about 2016. I was going to write about this anyway, so here goes…

My goals, dreams, plans for 2016 (in no particular order) are:

  1. Take the TEFL course (Teaching English as a Foreign Language)
  2. Teach for at least 3 months in Mexico
  3. Paint more
  4. Upload at least 100 photos on Bigstock, iStock, Dreamstime
  5. At least 1 blog post per week (after finishing JusJoJan)
  6. Sell beach house
  7. Get yard cleared up and looking half-way decent again
  8. Query local newspapers about writing for them
  9. Sell article re: Best Burgers on the Beach
  10. Sell article re: Deep in the “Start” of Texas
  11. Write (and sell) at least 6 more articles
  12. Enter at least one local art show
  13. Sail more!
  14. Fix blog issues
  15. Start playing the piano again
  16. Sign on a voyage through Crewseekers, Crewbay, etc.
  17. Go to Panama, investigate moving there
  18. Sail a tall ship to Antarctica!
  19. Explore Vietnam
  20. Thailand for the Songkram festival
  21. Granada for the Hippica I missed last year by a week!
  22. Spend some time in Ireland
  23. Take a cruise (on a big cruise ship)

That’s just a short list. Notice I didn’t put anything on there about losing weight this year. 😉

I think I can actually accomplish all of them down to about #16, even tho I’ll probably still be unemployed. The challenge is going to be for me to stop worrying about being out of work and how long I’ll probably be out of work, and what the heck am I going to do if I’m out of work for so long,etc. STOP letting those worries run me down and just LIVE life for a change!

Thank goodness I was able to prepare at least a little bit for this plunge in the price of oil. I knew I would probably get laid off, just like so many others already had been. I wish I had saved even more, but I’m not one for denying myself everything! I save what I can, but I still like to enjoy life in the meantime. 🙂

The most important thing I have to do this year is renew my USCG license (US Coast Guard). They’re only good for 5 years now. 🙁

Without that, I can’t work anywhere. It’ll expire in mid-December, so I have to start getting everything ready to turn in by October at the latest. So, that means I’ll have to be around here. 🙁 Otherwise, I think I would just stay down in Mexico teaching (at least until some offshore work starts up again).

I can’t wait til I’m able to RETIRE! Oh, how I wish I could forget about working from now on!!! I’ve been trying to figure out some way to quit working for the last few years. Now that I’ve been laid off and no real hope of a job anytime soon, I’ve been constantly thinking of possible scenarios. What if? What it? So far, I haven’t been able to come up with anything that makes any sense.

It’s a new year and hopefully it will turn out better than the last one. I hope that’s true for ALL of us! Here’s to 2016! 🙂

Limbo

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Have you ever felt like you were in limbo? I rarely have. But I am feeling like that right now. I hate it!

I’ve always been one to have a goal. To have something, at least in the back of my mind, to work towards.

Up until fairly recently, that goal was to become ‘a ships captain and sail around the world (and get paid for it)’. I FINALLY achieved that goal in December of 2011. I earned my Master AGT (any gross tons) from the US Coast Guard. I was so happy, so thrilled, so stunned, to have FINALLY earned what I had worked so long and so hard for.

But, since then, I have been a little bit lost. I had been trying so long and so hard to reach that goal, that I hadn’t really figured out ‘what next?’

I’m still in that phase. Trying to figure out ‘what now?’. I was OK with that until I got laid off. Having work always kept me occupied. I never had to think about what was next. Working, and then busy as hell when I was home. I was able to travel, take courses, work on projects, etc. All because I knew I only had a month or so at home to get everything done that I needed to do.

Now, I am out of work. There is NO work in my field. I doubt there will be any until the price of oil goes back up to at least $70-80 per barrel. Hundreds of thousands of people have been laid off already in the oilfield and there are still more layoffs in the news every day. 🙁

According to the people who think they know about this kind of thing, it could take another 2-3 years for the price to go back up to the point companies start hiring again. Some ‘experts’ think oil could go back up to $100 next year. Some people think it never will due to alternative energy increasing in efficiency and affordability (I think it will be decades before that happens).

So, I am in limbo. I am HOPING to get some work over the holidays. All of my usual sources have dried up. I have ONE recruiter still telling me he’s got something coming up, but nothing definite yet. Christmas is less than a week away. I’m losing hope, but still not ready to throw in the towel yet.

So….. what am I going to do?

I WISH I could just say the hell with it all and ‘retire’! I WISH. But, if I plan to live more than 10 years, then I just can’t see how I could possibly survive for any time past that. Those 10 years would have to be spent living somewhere with a MUCH lower cost of living then the USA. I’m not objecting to that at all, in fact I would LOVE to move NOW to one of those places. The problem with that is that they won’t let me until I’m retired and/or have a ton of money!

Since I don’t know how long I might live, and hopefully it’ll be more than 10 years, I need to figure out some OTHER way to earn a living. I have all kinds of ideas. I’ve already tried a few: vending machines, rental property, investing in the stock market, painting, writing, photography, blogging. Not one of them has made anywhere near enough money for me to consider concentrating on just that one. The rental property comes close, but I’m still at the point where I need to subsidize them with regular work. 🙁

I found a temporary job ashore through an old friend. It pays about 1/5 of what I normally make. It’s not every day. It won’t start up again til the end of January. It won’t pay the bills. But it pays 2-3 times more than any OTHER job I’m likely to find here. It helps.

I’m considering taking the TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language) course. No, it won’t be enough to pay the bills either, but at least it will allow me to move somewhere less expensive to live. I think I might actually enjoy teaching and it might turn into something really interesting. The biggest problem with that is my fear/expectation that I would have to dress/act in a ‘professional manner’. UGH! I hate the thought of that!

So, while I sit around the house, hoping to get a call for a ‘real’ job, I try to work on my other (hopefully someday money-earning) projects. My writing, photography, blogging. Problem with that is I’m getting so depressed with the situation around here that I don’t feel like doing ANYTHING.

All the things I’d normally be doing in my time off, like sailing, going out to see friends, going to the zoo, going to do things in Houston, traveling, are either too expensive or I put them off cause I just don’t feel like getting out of the house. I’m getting super lazy, doing less and less every day. I didn’t even take my daily walk yesterday (I did today).

I really hate being in this situation, this limbo. If I knew for sure I could get regular work, and when, I could make some kind of decision. Knowing I would be leaving soon would motivate me to get off my ass and get some of these projects around the house done.

If I knew for sure there was no work (not still hoping to get some), I might decide to take the enforced time off to take the TEFL course. Or just take the time to concentrate on fixing this blog (the total disaster of moving it still needs to be fixed). Or work on photography. Or writing. Or painting.

Or, I might look harder at some of those sailboats looking for crew. That would be a cool adventure! I only wish they paid something, but there are always so many people out there willing to go for just the experience, or even to pay themselves! I know I would make a good crew on any passage. Too bad I don’t have the money now to put in for costs, or pay for transportation. 🙁

So, limbo. I wish I knew something to do to motivate myself (other than having a job pop up).