I thought I had dodged the Covid bullet.

Even when working in a hospital and a child in school my luck held. I guess eventually though we all have to roll the nat 1 (for anyone not a geek that means an epic failure). I thought the worst that I could get was losing my taste because I am relatively in shape. I have put a lot of time and effort into my dad bod, and it works for me. I couldn’t have been more wrong though. Thanks to my nat 1 I spent Christmas day in bed and four days later returning to work I was let go. I would say I wasn’t truly sad about it because I loved the job but other factors really well…. SUCKED.

I knew I needed to make a change because the definition of insanity is doing the same thing expecting different results. I did some soul searching and realized that I didn’t love the job but rather I enjoyed helping people. I also realized I despised sitting in traffic. I live in the Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex, and it has the 4th largest population for context. Thus began my work from home search, I had 4 years of remote and on site experience. How hard could it be…

After getting harassed to work for $18.00 per hour (before you come at me I was making almost double before Covid) by one company and multiple unscrupulous/dishonest recruiters to sell insurance for the same company using multiple subsidiaries I was beginning to loose hope but I still had unemployment. I was going to hold out for the right company. What I eventually realized was that the tier 2-3 position I was hoping for was not in demand and my skills were more suited to on site work. I started searching for other possibilities and thanks to TikTok I came across Merit America thanks to underthedesknews. I figured they would ask me to pay at some point and if nothing else I could bail out because I wasn’t homeless but I extra money didn’t exist. I am glad that I did get more information because it led to 16 weeks of satisfying learning. I discovered Coursera Unfortunately, most of the professional development skills they taught I had already been taught. What they did teach me was that in my time not looking for work the entire process for finding employment had shifted. It wasn’t just resumes and cover letters anymore. LinkedIn, portfolios, and videos had become common place if not the standard…