Getting Started

The season begins!

A few months ago I was lamenting that, even though the time is challenging to sacrifice with my son, it's important to be able to make some extra money. The money wasn't there because the work wasn't there, sadly!

Thankfully it might be changing.. potentially. I've gotten a few shifts already and it looks like the late summer, early-autumn work is rolling in!

I think that there are for sure a lot of challenges with doing extra work. Importantly, we need to be able to spend time with our families and when we are not, there are negative consequences to it, in some ways. In other ways though, it helps relieve some of the financial challenges that we are living in, so I'm of the mindset, don't do it every weekend, but for sure take advantage of it when you get it.

It's funny, the environment for sure is a little different. Going down to the area, it's a bit of an industrial spot and I can see that there are a lot more things going on. Construction going on, plenty of commercial things around. Sometimes when I'm here, it's completely empty and dead, which is okay sometimes but it's also challenging in others. You get a sense of the pulse of the economy when things are moving well!

So I started writing it before the shift, but ended up getting there late so I couldn't finish it until after but it was a good vibe in the air. I certainly remember the 2020 years when people were all fucked up over a common cold, and didn't do normal social things. These days, a lot of the normalcy in business and life has returned thankfully! The contract work was good, people were chilled back and jovial even, but of course spending time doing things they were needing to learn so that was good.

I think that's one of the things I enjoy most about the work. Obviously getting paid is really important because we can't do things for free, but it's a good atmosphere with good people. There are plenty of things we could do but in a toxic environment and with shitty people, even if the money is great there isn't a whole lot of quality of life, if you know what I mean.

These days, I think people are thankfully smartening up to demand quality of life and work-life balances that are reasonable and fair. Sure there are plenty of examples where it's not, but I think it's more prevalent these days to have, in the zeitgeist, good balances and I am hopeful that we can keep that up. We, in the middle class, win at the end of the day when we can have a good work life balance!

What about you, do you find some things you do for work enjoyable and even a bit entertaining? What is it? Let me know in the comments!