Olwyn.Mary wrote:
(Cross-posting to alt.sewing and RCTS because I don't think I ever got around to telling everybody there, either, and I might as well say it to everybody all at once)
I still work part-time from home, but I periodically lose accounts and the pay has finally dropped to the point where I can no longer afford to work at what the new accounts want to pay me, so last year when I lost over half my work (three separate people I was subbing for) all at once and didn't feel like I could take another 30% pay cut after having taken a 40% pay cut in 2004, I started looking for in-house jobs. After six months of sending resumes, telephone interviews, and in-person interviews, I finally found a full-time, in-house job 4 miles from my house with moderately flexible scheduling (I have to put in 40 hours per week any time between 8:45 am and 6 pm M through F -- no weekends, paid holidays, and a paid vacation, which three things feel like heaven). I absolutely DETEST getting up and going to work in the morning (that is, especially after I have already done my part-time, at-home work) and being gone for that long, and my little dog (who I might not have gotten if I had known that I was going to end up going out to work two months after I got her) misses me terribly while I'm gone, but if the job fairy had come down and given me the best job I could have realistically gotten, she couldn't have found anything better. But the schedule is grueling and after six months on the job (I get a half-hour lunch break and several days a week I spend it knitting because there isn't enough time to go anywhere or do anything) I still haven't figured out how to pack a decent lunch and I still can't keep my focus for 8 hours straight, but I am getting better.
It's still transcribing medical records, but instead of listening to audio recordings all day, I transcribe from the doctors notes, cribbing from the patient's previous visit note. This is TONS better than transcribing from audio all day long, a lot more mentally stimulating, and a lot less stressful on the old borderline RSI problems.