Another Sunday, another day-long bout with illness. I don't understand why this happens to me but it's predictable. I get too wired up from a week at work and I make it through one weekend day okay, but the second day I wake up with The Headache From Beyond Space. I could hardly breathe, my head hurt so bad this morning. Worse, something was seriously out of alignment in my spine, and the pressure induced nausea. I had to stagger out of bed and throw up at 8 o'clock on what should have been a peaceful Sunday. Sweat rolled off my forehead even while I shivered with an uncontrollable chill. I was really only comfortable when I was asleep, but sleep wasn't possible. Instead there were nightmarishly long sequences of kneeling on the freezing bathroom floor, waiting for the pain to diminish enough so I could stand up. The cats were concerned and kept swirling around my legs as I rocked back and forth, willing the excrutiating throbbing to end and trying to stretch my neck just the right direction so the damned vertebrae would snap back into place.
This can't go on. I can't pay this price for a job. The tension is too high, the panicky feelings are returning. I can do what they want me to do, but I don't think it's a good idea. I have to get out, and soon. I think the thing that pushed this over the edge was getting my paycheck on Friday and finding out they didn't pay me for Thanksgiving. I have never, in 20-some years of working full time, not gotten paid for a holiday. It's rotten and cheap of my employers, I'm sorry to say. I wasn't too happy about not having any vacation for a full year. I was even less happy to find I couldn't apply for my IATAN card, which entitles me to all the discounts and privileges of being a travel agent, with them for three months (I'm on probation for my first 90 days, which is typical but not usually so rigidly enforced). But no paid holiday is just plain mean.
So. I need a job. I need a job outside of travel. And what do I have to offer? Not much; quite a lot. I'm hard-working, reliable, smart, self-motivating, professional, and I have glorified secretarial skills. I have a background in choral conducting, English literature, and European history. I've been a paralegal, a production assistant, a general factotum in several fields. I can do anything, and I have no training in any particular career. If I could pick out a job, it'd involve computers, graphic design, and editing.
Help me. Recommend something. I don't quite know where to go next.
