How many of you have lived in the middle of nowhere?

[Xist]

I loved working at the school, I was always happy to go to work and to pull my kids. They acted happy to come with me and happily greeted me in the hallway. Kids hugged me regularly. I was making friends with the teachers and other staff, too, but my supervisor never seemed to care for me. I do not have any idea if I did something wrong or did everything wrong, but when she was around, it seemed like I could not do anything right.
She did not ask many questions. Things were never up for discussion, she decided everything without allowing input from me. February twentieth she mentioned someone told her I was talking about coming back next year and she let me know that she had decided to not train me and I would quit after a year. Then she screened one of the students I had seen every week. A different person did different activities and told our boss that she had different results because I guessed on our notes, which were used for billing, so she did not sign them.
That was the end of the conversation. She did not say “I am not signing them until you do…” When I tried to discuss things before she always refused. Without my supervisor signing my notes, they cannot bill. How do I have a job?
I have maintained contact with my previous supervisor. She is awesome, wrote me a letter of recommendation for grad school, and may have answered more questions since I quit that job than while she actually supervised me. She did not have any idea how I could keep my job.
Our boss sent me a Google invitation to discuss my contract, but not for three days. She did not write anything, just sent the invitation.
My supervisor and I started the year with eight-four students. I had fifty-six and I saw almost all of them every week. We probably had annual meetings for about forty-two students, fifteen were dismissed, and most of the rest had reduced minutes. With forty-one students, in groups of two or so, with half-hour sessions, that was only ten or eleven hours of therapy each.
What was I supposed to do with the other twenty-nine?
Last week I saw all of my kids, wrote my notes, wrote and signed my progress reports, and spent hours working on speech activities.
That still left me hours to worry about my ability to support myself.
I finished everything, cleaned out my desk, went to that appointment, and resigned. Then I rented a truck and moved almost everything into a locker near Mom.
I found a new job after three days, doing in-home speech therapy again, but this time my supervisor lives elsewhere, and apparently will supervise me through Skype. I do not know how well that will work, or where I will find all of my clients. I accepted the full-time job because I could not find enough clients.
If I do not maintain twenty hours a week, I cannot apply to the grad program that I have been trying to get into, but I will work Saturdays if I need to.
I need to get into grad school and complete the program.

[MetroMPG]

Yikes.

On the plus side, this really made me laugh:

Is one notch on her driver's seat too far and the other too close?

Life is pretty hard for some people.

I hope at least your car seat adjusts properly.

[Xist]

Eh. I wish they would adjust a notch or two further back.

Please have a good day!

[Anticommunist]

I have.

For the past twenty years or so, 6-7 months a year, I have been working on board large ocean-going merchant vessels, mostly petroleum crude oil carriers.

We sail from the Persian Gulf to US Gulf via Cape of Good Hope and back. Round trip takes 3 months.

Sometimes, not even Inmarsat satellite phone woks as our on board equipment is unable for w/e reason to connect to a Satellite uplink. It goes w/o saying that we don't have internet while at sea and frequently while at port too.

Life aboard just consists of two things, sea and sky and the occasional albatross apart from work.

The worst voyage I've ever done was when I was working on a Bulk Carrier (Cargo) Ship and we had discharged at Townsville, AUS, and we were ordered to sail next to Richard's Bay, RSA to load Coal in bulk.

It was summertime in the Northern Hemisphere but winter for the Southern hemisphere, and we had to sail from Townsville to South of Tasmania and then sail parallel to the AUS S Coast (aka Great Australian Bight) to make it to RSA.

Nothing works in these waters. We had no Satcoms, no Radio, nothing at all to communicate with the outside world, and the weather was constantly at 8-10 in the Beaufort scale until we cleared the SW Australian cape and altered course to a more Northerly heading.

This voyage was my worst and the one I felt I truly existed outside the civilized world.

So yeah, other people have lived in the middle of nowhere too, OP, you ain't the only one.

[MetroMPG]

Welcome to the forum, Anticommunist. That's an interesting first post!

(Coincidentally, I'm just reading an account of the last days of grain shipping via square riggers from Australia to Europe -- similar sentiments there.)

What the heck brings you to EcoModder?

[Anticommunist]

Τhose poor devils on sailing ships had it a lot worse than us modern seamen b/c they could get becalmed and b/c their ships often capsized due to incorrect loading of grain cargo.

I have been a lurker for a very long time. I own a Fiat Punto 2002 8V and as I make long trips while ashore (432km round trip), I used your website and tips to do some hypermiling on my Punto.

Eventually I just gave up Unleaded fuel altogether and just installed an LPG system to convert my engine to use LPG fuel. (Unleaded 95 fuel costs 1.65 Euro per litre here, unbelievable huh?)

Your site still came handy though b/c of the hypermiling tips, so thank you very much for posting.

I have read lots and lots of your posts here as well as in your blog. I really appreciate your efforts, sir.

[MetroMPG]

Hopefully, sailing today is safer than the situations those deckhands faced back then! Those guys were practically disposable, and it sounds like the equipment was rarely in good (safe) shape. (The book I'm reading, by the way, is The Last Grain Race (1956) by Eric Newby.)

I've only done one crossing -- North Atlantic, via schooner going the "wrong" way. By every single measure, it was a playful holiday compared to life on a commercial square-rigger. The only similarity: we used the same Swedish watch system described in the book. Which I hated. Would MUCH prefer 4 hours on, 8 off!

---

I'm glad you found the forum useful while ashore. This community has made a fantastic resource.

[jcp123]

My parents had a Country estate for a while - 8 miles from town. It was calm there, very freeing. We even had our own gun range in the back yard. It was fantastic, but a lot of upkeep work, and they downsized being on a retirement income. Another downside was internet - we found a solution for a while with what was essentially long-range wifi. It was a neat solution from a kind gentleman who ran a family business outfitting locals who weren't served by existing high-speed internet, but the company folded shortly after a terrible accident which killed the owner as he was disassembling a tower he'd purchased and wanted to move to widen his coverage area.

Echoing a bit of what the kind sailor said above, as a truck driver you're always somewhere but kind of on an island restricted to where you can walk to in a reasonable amount of time. This is a lonely job, and though there's lots of interesting scenery, it's not the kind of travel which lets you experience new places in the ways which make real travel exciting. Instead, I can tell you where the roads are good and bad, how aggressive drivers are, and what areas have a lot of traffic enforcement.

In a sense, the city in which I now reside is still sort of in the middle of nowhere. At a population of just over 100k, it's not isolated. It technically has all of the city things. But it lacks a depth of culture, entertainment, and free-spiritedness. It's big enough to be big, and small enough to be small.

[Xist]

I almost could not find my thread because for some reason I thought I used this title. I had extra difficulty because someone likes to fill The Lounge with new threads!

This is not anything as dramatic as moving five hours away for a new job. I am just considering a second job and hoping it will not affect the first.

I have looked for a full-time school job almost every day since starting my third and current home health job. If one opened up in the few districts in the area I would apply immediately and follow up enthusiastically.

Two weeks ago I broadened my search and found a part-time job seven miles away with unspecified pay, but I already have a job, which more or less pays the bills, although not spectacularly.

I applied, did not hear back, followed up, had a phone interview two hours later, and was supposed to have a second interview half an hour ago, but they called and left a voice mail offering me the job.

Tentatively, I would work there Monday through Wednesday for six hours each, and travel to another school on the clock. I currently have clients Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon, and all day Thursday. I should have five new clients within the next month, but most of them conflict with the new job, so hopefully we can reschedule for Friday.

1. It will help keep me busy (fewer new threads in The Lounge).
2. The pay will be unimpressive, but it will help me pay off my student loans and credit card.
3. I can finally apply to the Master's program I want!

It is just weird, I visited the school, but when I first moved here, and the receptionist could not really tell me anything. I have not seen where I would work, I have not met my prospective supervisor, boss, or coworkers.

This seems weird, but I did it two years ago, and I am hoping to learn from those mistakes. I plan on regularly asking my supervisor how I am doing and where I can improve.

I also plan on applying to grad school ahead of time. It probably did not help that I applied at the last minute.

What do you guys think? Any downsides to me having less time for Ecomodder? I mean, any downsides to me being a more productive member of society actively engaged in helping others and my own future?

I asked the SLP if I could see where I would be working before making a final decision and she told me that I could talk to the front office staff and explain the situation.

I am about to call and set a time.

It sounds professional.

[freebeard]

I almost could not find my thread because for some reason I thought I used this title. I had extra difficulty because someone likes to fill The Lounge with new threads!

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