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Subject:Hunter Support Group? From:Dori Green <dorigreen00 -at- hotmail -dot- com> To:<techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Tue, 28 Oct 2008 08:52:46 -0400
I guess it's time I entertain my enemies and reassure my friends that I've been absent from the list not because I dropped dead, but just because in the middle of July my employers let me know that the Canadian bosses had "decided to go in a different direction" so they no longer needed a technical writer and I was cut loose with five minutes' notice, two months after returning from my disability leave. Six of us went on that day. Since then I've been working on continuing my recovery without benefit of insurance (who can afford to give up 25% of their unemployment income for the Cobra payments?), dealing with the paralyzing depression, and of course conducting a job search.
I'm free to relocate on a temporary basis to anyplace (including Florida for the winter); I've worked contract jobs out of town on an extended basis -- it's okay and in fact I'm pretty good at it. In this itty bitty canal town I can also see some possibility to create a full-time gig by making my talents available to several small businesses right here in the neighborhood. I've done the freelance entrepreneur thangie with a sign out front and even a rented office and I won't make that mistake again.
My problem is getting past the paralysis. If anybody else is at that point can we form a job hunter support group to keep each other motivated and moving? And if anybody has info about legitimate home-based writing or transcribing gigs I'd love to hear about them, too. The major hiring month is of course January, which means that November and December need to be my hardest-hitting hunting months.
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