Part 1 – The Realization

I should have started this a long time ago. It would have been better for me to explain what’s been happening in real time rather than going off of memory alone, but it hasn’t even been a year yet, so it should be fine. I’m definitely not a raging success, and I’m pretty sure I’m not even close to my goal, so as long as I keep this going, I’m betting I’ll catch up to myself one day, and we’ll all be better for it.

I should start off by explaining what this is all about. In short, I’m reinventing myself, and I’m hoping that if I’m successful, I can help others do the same thing as well. You see, in this story, you’ll read about all the mistakes that I’ve made, and hopefully you’ll understand how someone with no experience working from home at all was able to figure it out all on his own. I say hopefully because I have no idea how this is all going to end.

For me (and what I imagine it’s like for everyone, really), my day-to-day life started to feel like an out-of-body experience. I was watching myself go through the motions. Ya know?  I had a lot to be grateful for, but like a lot of people, I wanted more. I could see the next 10 years of my life all laid out, and although it wasn’t terrible, it looked as if every day would always be the same, and I felt a strong urge to do something about it. I woke up, took my daughter to school, sat in traffic, went to work, sat in traffic again, picked my daughter up, made dinner, washed dishes, took a shower, and went to bed. Every single day during the week, this was how it was, and the weekends were always filled with chores. Is that life? Is that really what it is? You do that for 50 or more years and maybe get to retire one day right before you die. I just can’t. I had to try something, and so I did.

Part 2 – The First Step

Yep.  I did it. I quit my job. It was a good one, too. I had seniority, benefits, job security, a 401(k), and even a stock purchase plan. Now, I’m not recommending people do this because I have to confess that I did have a bit of an advantage. First of all, I’ve always been good with saving, and I was 47 when I made the decision, so I had quite a bit of a cushion, at least enough to float me for a few months. The next thing to mention was that I had recently earned a license to sell Life and Health Insurance, so I was thinking of this as something to get me by. You’ll see when I start explaining everything how that part didn’t really matter as much. Everyone is going to have their own first step—their first job—that they go after when they try this. Life Insurance just happened to be mine.

When I first began thinking about quitting, I thought it might be a good idea to freshen up some of my online presence. I deleted Facebook years ago (which I definitely recommend), so I didn’t have to worry about anything there, but I also had a LinkedIn account lying dormant for some time that seriously needed some love. I updated my resume, posted it there, and changed the old job that I had listed to my most recent one. This was really the first step, because after that, people started contacting me, people I hadn’t thought about for quite some time. I decided to see what they were up to. Just how successful were my friends? I don’t know if they were being honest, but they all seemed to be doing better than I was. That was for sure. Then I found something that really got my attention. A friend of mine had a post asking for people to come join him. He was making six figures from home and developed a method to teach others. Now, this was exactly what I had in mind.

If you’re reading this and you’re starting to get the feeling that I’m a salesperson trying to drag you into my multi-level marketing scheme, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. In fact, if you’re into sales or looking to do that as your next career, you might not want to keep reading because I don’t have very positive things to say about the industry. I’ve said before that I don’t know how things will end, but I would be really surprised if they ended in sales for me. You know what? I take it back: if you’re interested, you should keep reading, especially if you haven’t even begun, because I’ve done some of the legwork for you and there are a few things you need to know.

First off, when you get your license, your phone is going to ring. People are going to start calling you and offering you jobs. That’s because you’re in the system, and the people calling you are looking for fresh meat to make them money. It seemed good at first. Hell, it’s a big reason why I quit my job. I felt like there was a whole community of salespeople out there saying, come and play. There is, but it’s really not as glorious as it sounds. Most of them are not going to pay you. In fact, you’re going to have to pay them. How does that sound to a person without a job and very limited money? What these companies have to offer is training and a CRM. If you don’t know what that is, it’s software or a website designed for managing clients. After they get you all set up with your login information, your background checks, and your bank information for payments and get that training underway, they’re going to want you to spend money on leads. Leads are potential customers that you have to call. That’s right, cold calling.

Sales is cold calling.  I feel like I should have known this sooner, but I guess I’m naive. The people I was talking to kept saying things like, “This is not cold calling. These are people who are interested. They’ve already inquired about a product, and you’re just following up with them to get them what they need” I know now that they weren’t really lying to me as much as they were actually believing it themselves. I’ve come to discover that this is the salesperson’s mentality. After actually making the calls myself, I’ve realized it’s the only way to survive. I’ll get into what that first phone call was like for me in my next post because that’s something I definitely don’t want to gloss over, but for now I’ll leave you with this. Salespeople aren’t just lying to you; they are lying to themselves, and somehow it works.

Part 3 – The Reality Hammer

I really want to talk about my first day on the job for this new chapter, but before I get into that, I need to get some details out about the test. The one I took was for the Florida 2-15. That’s a Life, Health, and Annuities license, for those who don’t know. I never knew this myself. I just did what I was instructed to do. The people at the company I was about to work for sent me links with instructions to take the test, forward my results, and prepare me to go out into the field. It wasn’t until I actually started working for another company months later that I found out it was even called a 2-15. I mention this so you understand just how little I knew about the industry. I was completely out of my wheelhouse but determined to fly. Remember, I was leaving a really good job for this. So I had to make it work. I studied for 3 weeks straight.  I even spent entire weekends in front of my computer, and when I was at work, I was sneaking off to find quiet spots where I could study. I’m also one of the minority who took the test at home. I didn’t realize most people are discouraged from doing this by instructors because it could potentially be a waste of time and money. If something goes wrong with your internet, someone comes into your room, or even if your lips are spotted moving on the camera while you read the material, the whole thing becomes voided. If that happens, you’ll end up having to take it again, but in person. The way I saw it, none of that mattered. If I failed, I wasn’t going to take it again. I was going to take it as a sign that this career just wasn’t for me. I spent so much time shoving new material into my head and asking myself, “What the hell was I doing?” that I had become fatigued. For me, the test was going to simply determine if I had just wasted my time. Fortunately, I passed on my first attempt.

So, now let’s talk about my first day as a salesperson. It was educational, to say the least. I might also describe it as terrifying, nauseating, or perhaps even a little life-shattering. Over time, I’ve come to learn that they all felt like this. Every salesperson I know has had the same experience, and it’s even been described to me as a sort of right of passage. It’s just the way everyone gets started in the industry. If you think about it, in my situation anyway, I had been conditioned to work a 9-to-5 job for over 30 years. So, there was no way this was going to go smoothly.

Here’s what happened: I was instructed to buy $500 worth of leads, which ended up being around 50. In the beginning, just starting out, my green self was thinking that was a lot. Oh, if I could only go back in time. I was sent a list with names and phone numbers on it and a script for when the potential clients would pick up the phone. My wife and daughter were out, and I had the whole house to myself to prepare, rehearse, and do what had to be done—make some calls. I’ll tell you that the last step sounded a heck of a lot easier than it was.

At first, I started out pacing around the living room, reciting my speech, and getting myself ready to dial. As I got closer to my computer and phone, I started feeling resistance. I realized in that moment that I was completely on my own. There was no supervisor to report to and no manager to tell me what to do. I also wasn’t getting paid for my time there unless someone answered the phone and then wanted to set up an appointment, and then wanted to show up to the appointment, and then wanted to buy insurance.  There were a bunch of things that needed to happen before I could get paid. For the first time, I was running my own business, and it was up to me whether or not I would be a success. No pressure.

The ability to dial did not come easy at all.  It was almost as if I was afraid of touching my phone. I would pick it up, punch in a couple of numbers, hang up, and then go outside to think it over. I did that several times. It was weird.  I just couldn’t bring myself to a place where I felt comfortable talking to a stranger and trying to sell them something I knew so little about, and that last part was extremely accurate. I knew very little, but in the training, I was told not to worry about that. They said “Know the difference between Whole Life and Term life, and you’ll figure out the rest as you go along” What if the client had questions? Oh, I was not in a good place.

Eventually, I made a call. You might have already predicted that there was no answer. So, then I made another one and had the same result. Then another, and another again. After a while, I calmed down, realizing this was probably how most of the job was going to go. I can’t tell you exactly how many times I did this before someone actually answered, because when that happened, everything leading up to it became a blur. It was like my actual self shrank down inside my body for a second but then flew out of my back so that I could watch myself stumble through whatever was about to happen next. I did not feel normal, so I turned into a robot and began reading my script.

This first person was nice to me. He cut me off to say he wasn’t interested, but then he thanked me, and I got the chance to wish him a nice day before ending the call. Trust me, it got much worse than that.

The first time I heard the words “Take me off the list” was when my brain physically acknowledged that I was making cold calls. How many times have I said those exact words in the past? I felt like a fool because I believed it when I was told that it wasn’t going to be like this. Then everything started to make sense—ugly and disturbing sense. Of course they were putting me on; they were salesmen. They lie to everyone, even people who work for them, because their mindset is to constantly make money. I’m their downline; if I make a sale, they get a piece of it, and that doesn’t happen unless I buy leads, and why would I want to buy leads if I knew they were just random phone numbers? It was only because I was told they were not. Look, I get it; somebody clicked on something, and there is a possibility that maybe it was because they were inquiring about an insurance product they saw. So, sure, I just paid for that lead. But when you hear someone tell you that it’s not cold calling, that’s not the particular client you have in mind. I was thinking maybe these were customers who actually filled out forms or possibly even called the companies to buy insurance. I don’t know, but I believed it. Even today, people always say to me that I knew it was cold calling, but I’m telling you I didn’t. I trusted what I was told. I followed the program, and suddenly I was regretting it. After a few hang-ups, obscenities, and even some angry text messages that were sent my way, I felt like I had made an enormous mistake. I spent the rest of the day lying on the couch thinking about how I had just spent $500 to get punched in the stomach.

Eventually, my mother was nice enough to buy a policy from me just so that I could fill out an application and see how it all worked. This is also another thing many salespeople do in the beginning. She would be my only customer, though. I left the company that I was working for shortly after. I say “left”. You don’t actually leave a company when you’re working like this. You’ll still have to write numbers with them for a while, and you could always go back. They’ll be more than happy to sell you some more leads, and even if your writing numbers expire, I’m sure they’ll help you get new ones. When you actually leave a company, you just sign up with another brokerage, and there was this other brokerage reaching out to me at the time, and they just seemed better. They told me they’d never ask me to spend that much money on leads for one and that they even had a program that would help me keep a budget. Their system was set up so that I would be on a sort of payment plan that would filter in live leads as people were actually clicking on the links, so that I could call them back immediately. This way, I could answer their questions in real time and not have to remind people about something they glanced at on the internet months ago. So, off I went to my next chapter.

Part 4 – The Disconnect

I’m pretty sure this is when things started to fall apart for me, and I don’t think I’ve fully recovered. Perhaps it was the aversion I had to cold calling that knocked me off my path, but I also wasn’t crazy about the job. There was no denying that things definitely seemed better with this new brokerage, but my head was still reeling from before. I just wasn’t as motivated as when I first set out to do this, and then as soon as things got started, I received another call.

Medicare was the job I was offered this time. The promise was an actual paid salary, benefits, a 401(k), and 100% inbound calls. I’d be switching from selling Life insurance to selling Health insurance, and everything about it seemed fine. All I had to do was say “Yes” So I thought.

My first task was to show up to a virtual meeting on the Friday of the following week. I thought it was going to be an interview, and I guess it was, but in a very broad sense of the word. There must have been at least 20 other people in the room when I logged in, and there was only one person there to talk to us. They tried asking each person to say a little bit about themselves, but I’m pretty sure not everyone got a chance to talk. After that, it was explained to us that we’d be put into smaller rooms for our actual interviews and that everything would make sense there. In the smaller room, I was there with two other people. We were asked about 5 questions (very basic typing and computer stuff) that I imagine were asked just to make sure we could function. You can’t have someone misunderstand what an email is if you’re going to have them work from home. I wasn’t surprised when they said we were all hired.

The next thing to do was fill out some forms and upload copies online. Some of them required witnesses, and I messed up on that part. I don’t remember exactly why, but something in the instructions was vague, and I wasn’t the only one who made this mistake. There was an email you’d send out to your witness, and then the task on the website showed complete, but it actually wasn’t. Your witness had to respond before the next meeting. I found that out during the next meeting. It was an hour long, so I called my witnesses and asked for them to respond right away, but apparently that wasn’t good enough, and I had to wait another week. Fast forward to that interaction, and I found out that I couldn’t even use the same form. Even though it was filled out, emailed, and replied to with a signature a week earlier, I still had to do it all again. Scrambling even more this time because my witness wasn’t available, I found someone else to do the job. This time everything worked, and I was moved on to the next step.

Another week passed, and the equipment arrived. It was a computer with everything you’d need to set it up, including two monitors and a headset. When I turned it on, I was asked for a username and password that I was never given, so I went through all of my emails to see if there was anything I missed. But the only thing I found was something that said that if I didn’t log in within 2 days of receiving my equipment, I wouldn’t get the job. I called up the company and was told that I could only get that information from my supervisor. I didn’t have a supervisor. I hadn’t even started the job. With this, they didn’t know how to help me. Over the next 2 days, I called repeatedly, talking to many different people and, I’m sure, a few of the same ones, until someone finally told me that everything would be fine. They said I should show up to the virtual orientation on the upcoming Friday, and there it would all get worked out. Everything happened on a Friday with this company. The time from the beginning of all of this to the actual orientation took 3 weeks, and remember, I was not getting paid.

Enter the orientation, and this was where things really got interesting. A week had gone by, and yet another insurance company had reached out. They wanted to interview me on the same day as my orientation for the other job. I was frustrated, so I figured “Why not?” The orientation ended up being a mess anyway. Not only were there many others in the group who were not given usernames and passwords, but there were people there still waiting on equipment. One by one, I watched their situations resolve while the hosts of the meeting kept asking me to stand by. They said that the system showed that I was hired, but for some reason it would not give them my log-in information. The only option I had was to wait, and wait I did. For 4 hours, I waited in that meeting. There was only me and one other guy left by the time my interview for the other job came around. I told the hosts of my orientation that I had to go but that I planned on coming back, which they assured me would have been fine. However, I ended up getting hired for the other job, so I just packed up the computer and sent everything back to them. I’m still not very sure if I made the right decision. I know that must sound strange after everything I just described, but trust me, what happened next was even worse.

Part 5 – Falling

I’ve heard the words Medicare and Medicaid thrown around many times throughout my life, but I never really understood the difference. It’s so obvious to me now that I feel foolish for not noticing the explanations that are right there in the names themselves. One is for people over 65, and the other is for families with low incomes. I’ve come to learn that the methods for selling these two products have differences as well. Apparently, Medicare plans can take up to 2 hours to complete the applications, whereas with Medicaid, you can knock out the process in under 30 minutes. 15 if you’re really good at it! Exciting stuff, huh? Yeah, I don’t think so either. It’s just that there’s a bit of an analogy here. Not really knowing what these things were, then learning about them, then actually becoming involved, was the process I had gone through, and that boring explanation is really a definition of what my life was like at the time. I was talking about health insurance options, filling out applications, and explaining things to people that I had only just figured out myself. So basically, I had heard about something, learned about it, and then I was bored.

I mentioned earlier how salespeople lie to themselves and that somehow it works. This is exactly what I was doing to get through this job. I crammed all of that information into my head, thinking only about the fact that I would get paid one day and not about how I honestly couldn’t care less about what I was selling. Then I convinced myself that I did. I even embraced it because I had set out on this journey originally to get a job in the insurance industry based only on the idea that I wanted to work from home, and now only a short time later I was actually doing it. I won. I made it. The dream had come true, and I did it all on my own. I was making more money than I had ever made in my life, and I was absolutely thrilled to be a deflated and rotting carcass that wore the mask of a smiling head. “Yes. You’re making the right decision.” Absolutely, this is 100% free.” “I understand that you haven’t had a job in three years. Is it safe to say that you’ll be making $14,000 before the end of this year, though?” “Excellent, and look at that! You qualify!” Oh, the food stamps? That was an old promo from before. You might be able to get that assistance from the provider once you sign up, though.” “It was a pleasure helping you today. Would you happen to know anyone else who might be in need of healthcare?” “No. I’m not crying?” “I love my job.” “I’m actually helping people.” “Is that blood?” “Do you smell something burning?” “I wonder what led tastes like?”

There’s a movie called Funny Games about a family held hostage by two individuals misrepresenting themselves as a couple of proper young gentlemen from down the street. Their malevolence is handed out in such a way that the victims actually feel like they are the ones doing wrong for most of the picture. This forces them to do things they wouldn’t normally do in order to appease their captors, such as one particularly disturbing moment where the mother goes through the motions of removing her clothes in front of everyone, including her young son. That scene was in my head every morning when I sat down in front of my computer to work. There was something about that pacifistic behavior I was relating to, and I had a feeling that somehow I had become the mother in that film. It just wasn’t possible for me to carry on.

There was definitely a very distinct moment when I realized that I would be giving it all away for the second time—the health benefits, the 401K, and the paycheck. It happened during one of my lunch breaks. I would always wait for my wife to come home from work before I took them because the hours were late and it was the only time I could spend with my family. On this particular evening, it was her turn to vent about the atrocities she had witnessed throughout the day, and I could tell that my new work schedule wasn’t helping her situation at all. I often wonder if she actually saw the decision being made behind my eyes while she was talking because my demeanor must have changed in that moment. Sure, I was empathetic towards her situation, but when I made the decision to quit just then, I suddenly felt relieved in my own selfish way. I never said anything , though. She figured it out the next day when she came home from work and found me cooking dinner instead of sitting in front of a computer in the other room.

Part 6 – Still Falling

This doesn’t look good. I realize that. It wasn’t just the job, though; it was the people I was working for as well. Look, I know I’m not the most experienced person to talk about call centers, but I did have that little run-in, and I did end up working for another one later on, so here is what I think you should know.

First off, forget feeling like you’re part of a team because you’re a number to them and nothing else. Perhaps if you stick it out long enough, things will eventually change, but I’m not privy to that kind of information at this time. What I can tell you is that they simply need people on the phone. That’s it.  Answer the phone. Don’t go to the bathroom. Don’t take time to read your emails, or even learn more about the company you work for. Just get back on those phones.

I had this idea in my head before I started working that I’d be sitting around doing some dull paperwork and checking emails while waiting for the calls to come in. A call center is nothing like that at all. To start off, every second that you’re on the clock is documented, so you have to disposition your phone to reflect whatever it is that you’re doing. If you set it to “available” (which is what the companies want to see), the phone will ring immediately, and it’s not going to stop, ever. As soon as you hang up, it’s going to ring again. Now, depending on the job, you’ll probably have some paperwork you’ll need to do after every call. I’ve come to learn that this is just plain unacceptable. You’re expected to do that on the phone. For some reason, these companies can’t comprehend the need for time to do stuff like that. Still, they’re going to send you emails that they’ll require proper responses to, and sometimes you’ll even be asked to take company surveys or some workplace courses that are necessary to your job, and God forbid that you’d ever need to look something up. You won’t have any kind of disposition for that on your phone. You’ll either be available on break (which you’ll only get two of) or at lunch. I’ve literally asked several managers about this, and it’s strange because it really doesn’t make any sense to them. Maybe it’s like that salesperson mentality I was talking about where they’re lying to themselves, I don’t know, but I always got the same answer. You do it on the phone.

What happens next is that you end up figuring out some dishonest ways to get these things done, because any sensible person would tell you it’s just plain wrong to read emails while you’re dealing with a customer. Could you imagine walking up to a customer service desk and the employee saying to you, “Oh, don’t mind me, I’m just going to read some emails while you’re talking, but go ahead, I’m totally listening”? It’s absurd. So what I would end up doing is selecting the “technical issues” disposition, or sometimes I’d even log off completely, do what needed to be done, and whenever I connected again, I’d just tell them my computer shut down unexpectedly and I had to set everything back up. They created this dishonesty, in my opinion. They can’t give you 15–20 minutes a day to finish up some paperwork and respond to emails? Maybe it’s some right of passage thing again where they tell this to people in the beginning, and if you ride it out, eventually they congratulate you and give you all the freedoms you need to do your job properly. I don’t know. It’s just all very strange to me, and I’m trying to make some sense of it. I was a number, I guess. Nothing else.

So look, this was all very new to me, and maybe I didn’t handle it correctly by quitting, but like I said, I was making more money than I’d ever made in my life, and I had savings, so I was good. This was November of 2022, so Christmas was coming up, and my daughter wasn’t going to be in school for a couple of weeks. The way I saw it, I would relax for a couple more months and keep on looking for something else while enjoying my holiday, and that’s just what I did.

Part 7 – Holiday Over

After the year became 2023, I was looking for work again. This time, it was a fresh start without the influence of sales narrowing my path. I could finally spend my days focused on what I wanted to do and not worry about a job that I was hardly interested in or one that I saw as a paycheck alone. If I had been looking for something like that, I never would have left the job I had all those years before. No, this was my chance to finally do things my way. I could take the time to learn a new skill or brush up on some old ones I had put aside for a while. I could learn code or get a degree in something. There were plenty of online programs and boot camps for me to sign up with. The future was wide open, and I could go anywhere I wanted. Then I took another job in sales.

It was about this time that I realized that I’m not very good at this whole ‘taking life by the reins’ approach. Whatever social media influencer dribble had stained the back of my brain for a while was gone. Those bastards sure do make it look easy. It didn’t help that my family had inserted a road-trip vacation into my life at the time that took me completely out of whatever comfort zone I was grasping at and dropped me into the middle of the woods on top of a mountain somewhere that I had never been. If I had financial security waiting for me at home, the trip would have actually been relaxing. Instead, I felt like I was taking a vacation from what was already a vacation, and somehow that was wrong. I definitely hit the books as soon as I got back and wasted no time slouching, but I needed money, and once again the job came looking for me.

Here are the differences: This new company was offering a two-week free training period with continuous support afterward, where someone would be holding my hand and guiding me seamlessly into the industry. There would be no cost for leads, unlike the $500 a week I ran into previously, and no reason for me to continue paying for E&O insurance since they were going to provide that for me. There were no costs at all. They just needed my time and absolute attention. Coincidentally, those were two things that I had plenty of.

Can I just say that I felt really good about this one? This company was big and extremely established. Their business has literally been around for over 100 years. The people were friendly. The training was fun, and when it was over, I could set my schedule however I wanted. There were specific times when the support team I was given would be available, but there was no obligation for me to keep that schedule at all. I wasn’t being paid by anyone, so no one had the power to tell me what to do. Anything I made would come from commissions. The company was to benefit from the sales. It was truly a great relationship and an excellent way to do business, in my opinion. I had finally latched on to a group that had figured this whole Life insurance industry out, But I still had no intention of sticking around.

Part 8 – I Really Do Think This Is Good Bye

So, here’s the thing. Sales can be great. I see it now. You put in as much work as you want, whenever you want, and that determines if you get paid. These companies that are out there are gonna get you on your feet. They’re gonna show you the products and how to sell them. They’re gonna give you some leads and walk you through ways to deal with people on the phone. They’ll be there whenever you need them to be, but they can’t generate money for you. That’s the area where you’re on your own. I understand that and I really don’t have a problem with that method at all. I honestly believe the problem is me.

You hear about so many different types of leads when you start out. There are internet leads, mail in leads, live leads, leads from advertisements, and leads from people you just meet on the street. There are even different types of leads for the way you plan on selling. For example: I bought a bunch once and failed miserably. Then, later on when I spoke to someone about it, they told me that because I was trying to sell over the phone, I had bought the wrong type of leads. I never actually figured out what type I should have been selling, but there was definitely a type I knew I wanted, and that type doesn’t come for free.

Tired of hearing about leads? I promise this is the last of it. There’s just something I want people to take away from all of this. If you’re licensed with a brokerage, but considered a non-captive agent, you’re gonna get contracts with every insurance company under the sun, and you’re gonna get every single type of lead in existence, but you’ll pay. If you’re licensed with one company and considered a captive agent, you contract with that one company, and you get whatever scrap/crap leads they have to give you, and you don’t pay. The ladder was my situation, but believe me when I tell you I wanted to pay. The free leads are terrible. Some of them were 10 years old. You really just get them for practice. They give you the experience of talking to people on the phone, and that’s it. You get the jitters out of the way. I mean, you might make one or two sales, but if you want to make a living, you’re going to have to do more; a lot more. You’re gonna have to put on a suit and knock on doors. You gotta hob nob with the business folk, hand out cards, and put up fliers. You gotta be that douche-bag friend we all know who makes parties and social engagements awkward because they’re always trying to sell you something or preaching about how their life has changed once they found out about this totaly interesting and new product. It wasn’t me. It definitely wasn’t me.

I worked 5 hours a night on this, and during the day I was a different person. If you’re planning on quitting your job and doing something like this, my advice, after everything I’ve gone through up to this point, is to spend as much time as possible on you. Learn a skill you’re interested in. Take a course in that field. Hell, go back to an actual school if you have to, but don’t waste your time like I did trying to do something just because you think it might pay. In order for me to make it work, I was gonna have to go all in, and I didn’t want to. I spent my mornings studying. I spent them reading. I spent them looking for work and doing anything other than trying to become a salesman before I’d have to put on that hat again and spend the rest of my nights hating myself for what I knew was a waste of my time.

It took me longer than it should have, but I did finally realize that this wasn’t for me over the next few months. I found yet another job. This time it was something totally different, without a doubt the worst pay I’ve seen in 20 years, but something completely new and exciting, and it just happened to be the exact amount of motivation I needed to get away.

I wrote a nice letter to my manager at the Life insurance company, explaining that I wasn’t planning on being gone forever (I was), and that I was thinking only about taking this new opportunity so that I could put a little cash in my pocket, since I wasn’t making any sales, and that I’d be back one day better prepared to be that sparkling employee she always envisioned me to be. I got an email the next day saying I was no longer employed by the company. I’m sure they’ve dealt with my type before. They knew that version of myself even better than I did, and I was thankful for it. With that decision being made for me, a weight like you couldn’t believe was lifted, and I was finally free.

Part 9 – Doing Time

It’s officially been a year since I set out on this journey, and I can honestly say that I’m still nowhere near the end. I’m good, though. I’m really good. Seriously, the headspace that I’m in right now is still damaged, but I’m feeling better about my life than I’ve been feeling about it for the past 10 years. As far as a paycheck goes, I’m making less than half of what I was making at this time last year—significantly less than half, and you want to know something? I’m not losing any sleep about that. Sure, I’m losing sleep about other things. My anxiety is still pretty next-level, but I’m not worried about money. This is pretty much what I wanted to feel like when I first started, and also what I expected my financial situation to look like because I know I’m a “waste of space” individual when it comes to figuring out the whole money thing on my own, but I also knew that when I quit my job, it was for other reasons than money alone.

So, let me tell you where I am right now. I’m caught up, for one thing. I’ve dragged you through the past and I’m currently doing things live. “I’ll write it, and we’ll do it live!” —Bill O’Reilly. So, now you get to see me fail in real time. That should be fun. Don’t you think?

Anyway, here’s what I have to tell you. I’m actually doing time right now. That’s definitely how it feels, but I think I have to. I think you have to do time. I found a job that makes me happy with the potential to become something great, and I’m reminded of that old cliché. Find a job doing something you love, and you never have to blah, blah, blah. I don’t believe the second part actually. You’re definitely gonna have to work a day in your life. I just know it’s important to find something that you love, and I’ve done that. All right, maybe it’s not love either, but I’m still reminded of that cliché. Just bear with me. I’m trying to say something here. The job is cool, and I’m perfect for it. I’m perfect because of experiences that I’ve had. I’ve known someone since I was a child who has never taken responsibility for anything in her life. No matter what the situation was, it’s never been her fault. At least that’s what she’d have you believe. What I’m doing now is customer service, and I’m not even gonna say 99% of the time; I’m gonna say 100% of the time. When a customer is screaming at me, I’m dealing with that same type of person. Not everyone can handle that. You gotta stay calm; you can’t just scream back, and if what some people are saying is true and there actually is a floating man in the sky watching over us all, he would tell you I’ve had plenty of practice for that.

Am I telling you to quit your job to make pennies every day and have people yell at you? No. This is just what happened to me. What I’m telling you is that if you can figure out a way to survive on minimum wage, just for a little while, my rambling should start to make sense. There’s this old familiar feeling going on, like when I first moved out of my parents house and didn’t know what I was going to do for a living, but somehow in the back of my mind I felt like it was all going to work out.

There are many perks to starting over. First of all, no one knows who I am. I’m working from home, so as far as anyone can tell, I exist only through chats, emails, and voice conversations. Think about that for a second. I can completely reinvent myself in this environment and that is the goal, after all. Every word I type is thought out. The voice I use on the phone is different. It’s like going back in time with the knowledge you have now and doing things another way. It’s a new world, and It can be anything I want it to be.

I know this is the standard, blue-collar, rat race method for success, but it’s the only one I seem to function in. I’m not a get-rich-quick guy. That has to be obvious by now. The job that I have offers tons of free courses for careers within the company and has a 70% internal promotion rating and I’m counting on that. There are coding classes, IT classes, business management classes, and even classes for health insurance in which I already have a license. Whenever I complete a test, I get a badge on my profile. All of it is documented, so in a couple of months, I can start applying for a transfer. I guess I’ll see what happens then. Hopefully you will too.

Part 10 – Checking In

Okay, so I said I had to do time, and that’s just what I’ve been doing. It’s been 6 months since I started this job, and I can finally move around; that’s their rule, not mine. I haven’t been adding to this blog because there hasn’t been anything to say. Nothing has changed, really. Sure, I could bore you with details about my day-to-day struggles at work, but if you’re even slightly interested in this, then you’re probably just waiting for me to give you the answer to the question, “How can I make good money working from home?” and you don’t really care about what I see every day because you’ve got plenty of that yourself. Understood.

Here’s the thing. I’ve been paying closer attention to this thing called work. I’m not just collecting a paycheck and waiting for life to happen like I did before. I’m actually seeing a structure here that I should have paid attention to a long time ago. You probably already know this, and if you do, then you’re steps ahead of me. What I’m talking about is the machine—that disgusting corporate machine that every company has and only a few people know how to adjust to. It’s that “put on a smile” and “follow our rules” attitude that big businesses just love. They want to make you into perfect little clones of their ideology—living, breathing representations of what their company means to the consumer. If you’re a rational person, it should disgust you, and the way that you deal with it is most likely the same as the way I did. You’re just doing the minimum, right? You’re showing the company you work for that you understand what they’re asking of you. You put on a smile. You do the dance, but when they’re not around, you fall back with your friends and poke fun at the whole thing. It’s a method of bonding. You’ve found people just like you who are never going to be “that guy,” the guy with no personality of his own, the guy who has memorized the company handbook and has HR’s number programmed into his personal phone. What I find interesting about remote work is that it’s easier to walk that line. I’m not sitting there face-to-face with people, making small talk, and getting sucked into the bitch at work drama that infests every company that I’ve ever worked for. I’m a text message and the occasional voice in a Webex meeting. I have time to research what the company expects of me before I put a message into a chat window, and I am truly surprised at all of the people who don’t do that. How can they be so angry and obvious when they post? Why is it that they don’t understand they have the option to keep those negative thoughts to themselves? It must be so much worse than I remember when you actually have to go to work every day.

What I’m doing is a little of both, admittedly. It’s not a perfect system, but it is working. I’ve found my people, and we have private DMs, and those can be edited, cleaned up, and apologized for with a laughing emoji or a GIF that lets people know I wasn’t serious. It’s what you put in the main feed that matters. It’s what you send in an email and how you respond to your managers that make the difference. I’ve already been tapped for a team management position, and I haven’t even been there a year. I’m being asked to mentor people who have been with the company for more than a decade and still haven’t figured it out. It’s so easy. It’s just so obvious and easy, but I’m glad they don’t understand. If they saw it like I do, we’d all be at the same place, and I’d be competing with myself. That said, moving up this corporate ladder is still not where I want to be.

On the side is where the important stuff is. Just so that you know I haven’t thrown in the towel for a company that pays monkeys with peanuts, I’ve got a few things that you should know about. I’ve been taking coding classes on my own time and building up my resume. Some good friends, who are way more successful than me, have already figured this stuff out, and they’ve been giving me a few pointers. Honestly, I think they should be starting their own blogs. Anyway, what they tell me is that LinkedIn is actually a better resource than I ever gave it credit for being. You can take courses and post your results and achievements there, and sometimes recruiters actually look at that stuff and will find you a job. You can literally build yourself up on paper. Well, what counts as paper these days? I’m even taking continuing education courses for my Life and Health insurance license, just in case I need it. You never know what this twisted, freaking universe is going to throw at you. Until next time. I’ll be in touch. Oh yeah, Happy New Year!

Part 11 – Disappointed yet?

Oh no! I’m letting my 0 followers down! I’ve realized that this blog (like myself) isn’t a raging success. I haven’t been posting, but I don’t plan on giving up on it at all. I just haven’t figured out the best option to share with people right now. I’m working from home. That was my goal, and that’s what I’m doing, but I know people are interested in more than that. We don’t want to just be home. We want to be home and rich, or at least in one of those upper tiers that makes life a bit easier. Yeah, I’m still not there yet, so I have nothing new for you. I will tell you that I’ve been taking a bunch of coding classes through the whole LinkedIn Learning thing. I know a few people who have been successful with this, and I am interested in staying up to date with technology since it seems like we’re all going to be working for robots one day, or at least competing with them for jobs. 

I’ve also been giving some thought to building up this website a little by adding some personal anecdotes and opinions on life, as well as a few movie reviews. I know, boring, right? Like, the world needs more movie reviews. The only reason I’m considering that is because people keep telling me I should. We shall see. I definitely plan on doing something. I hope all is well in your world, Mr. or Mrs. Nobody reading this blog. Until next time. You’ll be hearing from me.