Tag Archives: #unemployed

I’m Back!

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It feels like much longer than it was, the 27 days I was out there without internet. I was so grateful to have even a few days of real work again! I was hoping for more, but things are still very, very slow offshore. Every one of us on board was so thankful to have a job after a long dry spell.

Too bad, but the company finished up all the work they had lined up and so laid me off on Saturday. There was some talk about more projects coming up in the near future, but nothing definite.

I can survive another couple of months off of that job. I have a class lined up to teach the week of June 25th. Maybe by the end of the month something else will come up?

The price of oil is still under $50/bbl. Until that changes, I don’t see much hope of a decent job. But even a few days every now and then will be enough to get by on. I know most people are thrilled at the low price of gas at the pump (tho it should be about $1 less going by price/bbl- all that extra is taxes!).

I would probably be thrilled too if it didn’t wipe out my entire profession. Every sector of the maritime world is tied to the offshore sector and the price of oil. When it’s low and the offshore sector shuts down, people migrate to deep sea, towing, fishing, etc. Shutting off any options to do anything else on the water.

Shoreside jobs are a total waste of any mariners skills and training and don’t come anywhere near offering even the worst pay/benefits we earn on the water (and it’s not all about the money either).

I’ll spend the next couple of weeks catching up on things I’ve been putting off: exterminator, dentist, house cleaning, oil change, car wash, doctor, painting projects, taxes, etc. All kinds of fun stuff like that. 😉

Hopefully, I can keep things interesting with some stories from the recent past. 😉

Looking Forward to Monday Morning!

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Who’s looking forward to Monday morning?

I am!

Thank god I’m going to work tomorrow morning! I’m scheduled for a grand total of 3 days of work this month and hope to hell I get all 3!

I’m not eligible for any unemployment assistance, even tho I’ve paid into it for over 40 years. Now, when I really need it, I can’t get it, simply because my last job was with a foreign company (for a year and a half). A job I took mostly in order to get ‘insurance’ which is now mandatory according to ‘Obamacare’.

So, now that I’m laid off, I can’t qualify for any of the programs I’ve been supporting for over 40 years. And people wonder why so many Americans are pissed off?!

So, I’m very thankful I can get ANY work at this point. It’s not much, but it’ll pay the gas to get to and fro, it might even take care of the electric bill (tho it’s summertime now and I seriously doubt that- AC running 24/7!).

I know most people are happy to see the gas prices so low (not nearly as low as they should be), but since my job is tied to the price of oil, I’ve been wishing it higher for months now. It’s been creeping up slowly, and I’ve heard that some land rigs have been starting up again.

Offshore drilling needs a stable price and it needs to be higher than where it is now. I’d guess around $80/bbl would start work up again. I’ve been working in the offshore oilfields for the last few years. Simply because that’s where all the work was.

I’ve been trying to find work on ANY kind of vessel since I’ve been laid off, but all the available openings have already been taken by people laid off before I was. It doesn’t help at all that the US Coast Guard keeps restricting our licenses so that we can only work on very specific types of vessels.

Basically, the rules we have to work by now state that if you don’t have so much time on 1 type within the last 5 years, you can’t work on that type of vessel any more, ever. At least not until you go through a time consuming, expensive, ‘training’ rigamarole. They treat you like you’ve never been on a boat a day in your life before! It doesn’t matter at all if you’ve previously spent 20+ years on one type of boat, say a towboat, and then you went fishing for 5 years. Doesn’t matter, you start from scratch to go back on a towboat!

Companies just refuse to hire you if you don’t have the exact, specific, ‘training’ and certificates they insist on. Even tho it would take less than a week of time onboard to re-qualify. Nope, they won’t let you on til you have it already. Catch-22 in action.

My original license said “Freight & Towing”. Since I haven’t worked on a towboat in the last 5 years, my license now says “Steam & Motor” and I’m not qualified to work on a towboat. Not until I get a TOAR. That takes a minimum of 30 days onboard a towing vessel. There is VERY little in that assessment that a licensed mariner isn’t already completely proficient in. The only items are those specific to a tug and tow (about 10 things on the list).

All the towing companies I’ve talked to since I’ve been laid off want me to spend at least 2-3 YEARS on deck before even considering upgrading me to tankerman (I job which I previously worked for over 13 yrs). I need 2 transfers to get back that license (tankerman PIC), but without it, I can’t get onboard a vessel to get those 2 transfers. See what I mean?

Smaller and smaller boxes we’re shoved into. Is it any wonder they’re having a hard time finding qualified mariners? (They say this, yet hundreds of thousands of us looking for work around the world).

What a paradox!

All I know at this point is that I’m very happy to be going to work in the morning for a change.

Anybody else been out of work for a long time? How did you survive it?

Halfway There!

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Today I had my 5th teaching practice. I have 5 more to go, so I’m halfway there! We passed the halfway mark for the class already. It will be finished on Feb 26th. It seems like it has been going by so fast.

The pace of the class has been picking up this week. We’re all very busy with our lesson plans and teaching assignments, we have another essay due Wednesday, and Thursday we have to make our presentations to be video taped.

Sarah gives us a grammar lesson

Sarah gives us a grammar lesson

I’m still confused over a lot of the verb tenses. I don’t remember ever hearing about most of them before. No, never in my life! I remember the past, present and future, but now all of the sudden there are 12 of them! WTF?! What are they and when do we use them all? I still don’t know but I am learning.

Maybe by the time the course is over I will actually know what I’m doing. 😉

Quote Me Again

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Like I said yesterday for the Daily Post’s prompt, I have more than 1 favorite quote. Quotes that inspire me. Quotes that I wish I could follow more closely. All of my favorite quotes have the same theme. They’re all related in some way or another to FREEDOM.

Yesterdays was about the freedom of a ship at sea. There’s nothing else like it. You’re out there in your own little world. You have to deal with your fellow shipmates, the ship itself, and the surrounding environment. It really is special.

Today, I’d like to share another favorite. I love this quote by Mark Twain (he used to be a riverboat pilot). It really speaks to me, more and more as I get older and more fearful. Also more aware of time passing by. I’ve been wanting to leave the US and travel the world ever since I went to school with the Oceanics when I was a teenager.

I’ve spent my entire life at sea, trying to have those same kinds of experiences again. But the world at sea has changed SO much since then. They’ve taken all the fun and enjoyment out of it. Now, it’s pretty much just another job.

I still love the time off it offers. It gave me plenty of opportunity to travel on my time off. I did, every chance I got. Whenever I had the money and I wasn’t spending my time off in ‘training’, I would take a trip somewhere.

I started investigating what it would take for me to move overseas and found out that I would not be able to do that until I was old enough to retire (or won the lottery).

I don’t have the resources it would take to start a business, which is actually a good option in a lot of places, but I could not find a single country that would allow me to move there and WORK to support myself for the time it would take to become a citizen. The only option left was to teach English.

So, I started looking into learning how to teach English. I was never really very serious about it. I was still able to work offshore and the pay differential is just HUGE. I was able to earn more in 1 day at sea than I would earn as a teacher in a month (or even 2 months)!

So, I continued working and traveling when I could on my time off. Too fearful to take the plunge and just GO. I would never have hesitated when I was younger. I knew then (and I know now) that I could find something to do that would allow me to travel and spend time in a place I liked. Back then, I would never have let worries about not having a work visa stop me from taking whatever opportunities offered.

I know there are people all over the world working under the table as bartenders, waiters, baby-sitters, time-share salesmen, etc. I know I could do a lot of those jobs too. But I’ve been letting my fears stop me from doing anything about my desire to get out of here!

I hate the idea of being forced to give up my chosen livelihood. I really still love working at sea, sailing for a living. I don’t want to give it up and never would have by choice.

So I guess it’s a good thing for me that the price of oil is so low that there is no hope of work for the foreseeable future. If there was, I would still be sitting here at home, spending most of my time applying for non-existent jobs and hoping for a phone call.

Since I finally admitted to myself that there IS no hope, I could finally force myself into signing up for the TEFL course and probably even spending some time afterwards in a foreign country.

I am still fearful, nervous and depressed, but I’m throwing off those lines anyway. 🙂

This is also a post for the Just Jot It January challenge. 🙂

Late Night

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I just got home. It’s late. After midnight already. I wanted to get my post done for the Just Jot It January challenge. Today’s prompt is: serendipity.

I’m just too tired to go into a big, long post right now. I’m not even sure if this counts as today or tomorrow. Technically, it’s after midnight. But I’m still up and been busy since this morning, so for me it’s still today. So, I’m going to count it as Thursdays post.

I wasn’t going to write about serendipity anyway. But, I will go look it up, just for the hell of it. 😉

noun
1.an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident.
2.good fortune; luck:

 

A good word to know. I had the general idea, but good to look it up and make sure. I could use some of that serendipity!

I spent all day in Houston today. I went to the zoo. It was such a gorgeous day. Sunny and cool. A lot of the animals were out and about. Even the ones that are usually sleeping. I got some nice photos.

I went to the joint Kings Point/Navy Happy Hour at the Refinery (they had a good selection of beers and the food looked pretty good). I like to go to those meetups when I can. I usually see a few people I know, and get to meet some people I don’t. It’s a great way to keep up with what’s going on around Houston and in the shipping world too.

I got there a little late, but there were still a few from the group there. I had a beer and talked to some of the older guys about how nice it was to be retired right now (wish I was too!!). This downturn in the price of oil has started affecting everyone in Houston. No one at the meeting hasn’t already been affected in some way.

I left fairly early since it’s a long drive home and I don’t know my way around Houston very well. I stopped on the way home for dinner at TGI Fridays. I LOVE their Jack Daniel sauce! I wish I could figure out how to make that stuff, I would be eating a lot more steak! I had a nice rare steak with fresh broccoli and a brownie obsession for desert (with ice cream on top).

I’m going to Mexico for a month, so I figure I better get my cravings out of my system now. I’ve never been a big fan of Mexican food. I guess that’s another thing I’m gonna have to learn while I’m in school down there. 😉

Going Back to School

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Today’s post for Just Jot It January, I’m not following the prompt (felicity), but going off on a tangent of my own…

I keep hoping and hoping that someone will contact me for a ‘real’ job. Since I was laid off from Ocean Rig in September and started looking for work, I haven’t had even one call (normally, I would have had a couple dozen for Christmas fill-ins).

I was very lucky and found a job through a friend. I thought I’d better go ahead and take it since things were so slow. I took that job, but it didn’t work out. I finished my hitch, but decided it wasn’t somewhere I really wanted to be. I decided to take my chances. I didn’t go back.

It wouldn’t have been worth it even if I had returned. They lost their contract and laid everyone off after only 1 more hitch. 🙁

I saw in the news this morning that Ocean Rig lost the contract for the Olympia, so I’m sure they’ll be laying off even more people there. Schlumberger just announced they’re letting go another 10,000 people.

Ocean Rig Olympia (google photo)

I guess I need to face up to the facts and get serious about finding something else to do with myself. It looks like there’s not going to be any ‘real’ job for me for the foreseeable future. Probably at least 1 year, maybe 2.

I wouldn’t be so upset and worried about it if they hadn’t changed the rules as to what we need in order to work offshore. Before, I would have just found something else to do for a while, knowing I could always go back when things got better. That’s hardly an option anymore with the new regulations.

Now, we have to have our documents renewed every 5 years. To do that, we need to have at least 1 year (365 days) of sea time within the last 5 (on vessels of appropriate tonnage). We also need to have a few (very expensive) training classes renewed within that same time period.

I also need to have a USCG approved physical done every year and if they find anything wrong with me, they might decide I’m not allowed to work any more. To top it off, the Nautical Institute (which is where we get our DP certificates) has knuckled under and decided that we all have to renew our DP certs every 5 years too (with at least 150 days). That might not seem like much, unless you understand how almost impossibly hard it is to get ANY sea time on a DP vessel!

So! I have just about decided to give up completely on trying to find some sort of job where I can put my 30++ years of experience to use. What an incredible waste of effort. 🙁

I basically have to start over from scratch. I’ll be 55 this summer and I’m not exactly looking forward to that process. I know I have a major attitude adjustment to make.

I’ve never really done anything else but work at sea. Yeah, I’ve had a few jobs on the beach like tending bar, housekeeping, painting, dishwashing, etc, but never anything serious. I tutored all through school and I liked it (but that paid less than any other job).

Ever since we were working in Thailand, filming the tsunami, I’ve been tossing around the idea of teaching English overseas somewhere. Spending so much time outside the US convinced me that I had to find a way to spend more time outside. I started investigating what would it take to move.

It could be so simple, if only I was old enough, or rich enough, to retire.

But, I have a long way to go before I qualify for either of those things. I still need to work! I found out that the only way to get a work visa in most countries is by teaching English. So, I started looking into teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL).

I’ve been pretty half-assed about it, mostly because I had a hard time choosing to give up the pretty sweet salary and work schedule I had working offshore. Now, it looks like that choice has been taken away from me- there IS no more choice!

I’ve been in contact with a school in Mexico. I’m going to give it til Monday and if I don’t hear some good news by then I’m going to bite the bullet and sign up  for school. The course is a month long. After that, I’ll have the option to start teaching right away or do something else for a while.

A month can’t be that bad, can it?

Maybe Mexico will be so wonderful and exciting that I’ll forget all about ever coming back! That would be perfect! 🙂

PS- the ‘featured image’ at the top is one I took in Nicaragua (not Mexico), but a lot of those Spanish speaking countries have more in common than the language. 🙂

Motivation

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For today’s Just Jot It January topic of motivation, about all I can say about it right now is that I don’t have any!

Why not? I’m just one of those people that has to have a goal. I need to have some kind of idea in the back of my head that I’m working toward. Also, I’ve never been much of an optimist. 🙁

Due to the present situation offshore, the steep drop in the price of oil and 100’s of thousands of people (including me) getting laid off, I am lost. My whole life has been totally tied to my work.

My job has given me the money to do the things I love (like traveling) and the time to enjoy them, (I only wish I had both of those things at the same time more often).

Now, with no work, and not even much prospect of any for months, if not years, I have plenty of time but no money.

My motivation is always tied to my goals. I’m having a hard time deciding what my goals should be right now. How to set my priorities. My goals right now are: somehow survive financially until work picks up and I can get back offshore, find something interesting and enjoyable enough to keep me busy in the meantime that doesn’t cost any money, make some kind of progress on moving.

They’re not too conflicting, the problem I’m having is that there is still that tiny bit of hope that a real job will come up (one that pays decent money). If it does I would most probably jump on it asap, which won’t work very well if I’m busy doing something else like taking the TEFL course or contracted to teach.

I’m not sure how to get motivated to do something when my life is in limbo and I don’t really see any good choices or possible ways to make things work out the way I’d like. I don’t like it, but I don’t know how to change it. Bummer. 🙁

Making a Living Without a Job…

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“…Winning Ways for Creating Work that You Love”. That’s the full title of the book I picked up at the Fund Your Life Overseas conference put on by International Living.

I went to Phoenix in November for the conference. I had high hopes to find some way to finance my highly desired move overseas. I spent 3 days there, listening to the speakers, talking to other hopefuls, collecting literature, entering contests for prize give-a-ways, soaking up the information. 🙂

One of the speakers I got to meet was Barbara Winter. The one who wrote the book. I had actually read the 1st edition of her book years ago. I figured there would be updates (and there were), so I bought a new copy. I love her ideas of being “joyfully jobless” and would really, really love to join her fellow travelers, but I still haven’t found my way.

google photo

google photo

I like Barbara’s ideas about having multiple sources of income. I’d actually been working on that before I ever read her book. I have (had) my job, rental properties, investing in the stock market, vending machines (not making any money), blog (still trying), writing (sold one article for $250), photography (sold 4 photos for a total of $2).

I’ve been reading “Making a Living…” off and on since I got home, working through some of the exercises, thinking hard about a lot of things. What are my goals? What do I really want to do? What do I really like to do? What do I need in my life? What can I do without? What are my skills? Could I learn some new skills?

Barbara talks a lot in this book about finding your passion. She asks questions like “What were the things you loved to do when you were a kid? What would you choose to do with your life if money was no object?” She helps you visualize. She helps motivate.

Then she talks about all the things that could be holding you back from pursuing those ideals (fears) and how you can get past those obstacles. She’s very motivating and inspiring. But a lot of the things she talks about just don’t seem to click for me, I don’t really want to work online, I’m not a computer geek and not really interested in becoming one.  I don’t want to start a business so I wind up working harder than I ever did at a job!

I want to RELAX. I want to spend my time doing things I enjoy: reading, writing, painting, making music, hanging out with interesting people, exploring new places, cooking, eating, sailing, hiking, snorkeling, SCUBA diving, beach combing, etc. I read the book, I still can’t figure out any way to make a living from one or any combination of those things. Maybe a beach bar? (If I had enough money, I could think seriously about that idea, but I’m broke!)

Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life. -Confucius

I totally believe that! My stepmother always used to tell me when I worried so much about something not working out “do what you love and the money will follow, the Universe is in divine order”.

Well, it always worked for her. It DID work for me when I was young and I LOVED working on those boats, before the accountants and insurance companies managed to screw it all up!

I wonder if there’s anywhere left at sea (or anywhere) where you can still just do your job, without all the extra pure bullshit they bury you in? Yeah, I’m still dreaming of that kind of life. The life of a seafarer 30-50 years ago. That would be perfect! 🙂

Another Just Jot It January post. 🙂

Merry Christmas 2015

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DC AWAI workshop

I hope you all have a great Christmas!

It looks like I’ll be home for the first time in decades. I’m having a hard time trying to get into the holiday spirit.

I’m going to see some good friends tomorrow for Christmas, so looking forward to that. We’ll eat, drink and be merry. Hope you’re all doing the same. 🙂