Transcribing

I have finally transcribe for money. I lowered my fee to 8 dollars to raise the possibility of someone to hire me. I should have asked for more.

I thought I could do transcribe an hour worth of recording in 3 hours. I was so wrong. You have to account, distractions (people dying on tv shows), environment (nieces banging whatever metal object they can) and your will to work. It took me 1 day to complete an hour of audio. That is pathetic.

I don't even have time to expound this post.

Free Software

We live in freedom. Or those who read this does. With freedom comes free things, the best of them are softwares. Free softwares. I just read PC Mag's top 167 free software for 2010 and am currently getting used to them.

First on the list was the universal printer driver from Xerox. I move a lot these days and I don't want to insert my USB in different computers (it now has a virus - poor thing) so I want to print directly from my buddy (laptop).

Then there was express scribe. I want to be a transcriptionist so I need this small great program. I'm still looking at voice recognition software out there but I guess this would do for now.

Third was Google Desktop. It functions similarly as its online counterpart, but searches only my buddy or its activity. I now know where I've hidden my porn just by searching for it. Easy, fun and reliable.

Then there was Last Pass. Though I only have two passwords for the moment or deviations from them, I installed it for the auto fill features.

I'm keeping some distance to the google calendar and another software that keeps a record of your contacts. I'll post some more softwares if I install more.

Getting a day job to pay the bills

I haven’t made it big yet. I haven’t made it digital. And if I want to continue eating I needed a day job. So I asked a relative for a favor and got me a part time job at a catering service. Since I am staying and eating in their house, I think I will not get paid but I will still get fed.

The great part of this setup is that I have around 7 hours each day to blog, freelance and build up my digital portfolio. Currently I am writing for my other blog, which is less personal and more academic in nature. I am also transcribing random posts from youtube so I can finally get a transcription job.

I’m still trying to adjust my body clock to my new schedule. I have to wake up at 6 am leave the house by 8 and immediately go to the market. It takes 2 hours to get all the things done before I can get some free time which is around 10 am. Then by 1 pm after people have eaten we go back to the market to buy ingredients. That would take another 2 hours, followed by another 4 hours free time. By 6 pm I leave the canteen and go back home which gives me 2 hours of personal surfing, some job searching before I go to sleep.

I also have to memorize so many things. First there are the store owners. Second are the people who I have to watch over. Third are the locations of the shops. Memorizing has never been my best feature. I almost flunked my high school chemistry when I forgot what the periodic table was. Now I only remember maybe 15 elements and not in order. I estimate that I’ll memorize all of the stuff I need by the end of the year, when I am about to leave the job.

The pangs of having enough

When people change things in their lives they develop stress. This is from all forms of changes, a new car, a new device, a new address, or worst a new girlfriend - you will eventually feel some knot in your back. Most of the stress we encounter allows us to challenge ourselves but the ones we let get under our skin ruins our day. I am infected with the latter type of stress and it has hindered me from writing more.

I like my new address, I like the routine (eat-sleep-eat), but for some reason I’m not writing as much as I thought I hoped. And this is what I hoped to earn a living from. I guess hypochondria strikes again. Thus the next lines come from a mind deprived of inspiration.

I believe that right now I am performing less because my basic needs are met. I am fed on time, anytime, I don’t do dishes, I don’t do laundry, I don’t even cook my food. Everything comes so easy my complaints come from not being with my buddy (laptop) 8 hours a day which I used to.

I don’t have stress from not having, but from knowing I could have more. I have spent the last few days filling my day with movies I have failed to watch before. It’s great but it feels so pointless. I realized that what made watching movies was getting so stressed from my previous job, similar to finding a well in a desert.

When I went away from home, I swore that I would change my habits to be the better me. That is not happening. This has been the cause of my stress. So what I did was read my previous blog about how much money I would need before I retire.

Maybe when I get my key for success I would post it here. But right now, you (meaning nobody) will be reading about my failures.

And tomorrow I might go out in the real world and try to get me a job.

Freelancer.com: the best place to freelance

Before I resigned from my previous job I already started skimming through freelancer.com. A colleague of mine said this was a great place to find client's who pay reasonably and rightly. So I spent hours of office time, browsing the website, searching for possible employers.

After 3 months of searching and not being up to par, I finally got an employer. Because the competition to get a project is brutal, I had to lower my fee t0 a 1/5th of the regular price. I had potential employers before this one but never followed through with the requirements due to the lack of time (spent by reading manga). What I've seen though is that people with great reviews get higher pay and get jobs easier.

There's tons and tons of jobs to find in Freelancer. I want to get a transcription project but I still need to get some great reviews first. Right now I get tests for writing articles but its such a stressful job. All the thinking, editing, and researching consumes my day. What I could earn in transcribing calls in an hour is the same I would after writing articles for three hours.

Still, looking at the jobs available on Freelancer can be fun. People look for the craziest things. My personal favorite is reading articles in a certain accent for a dollar per article. But Freelancer make it easy for you to search for jobs. It doesn't take a for a day to get used to the site and bid on projects.

I particularly like the amount of bid they allow you to have when you start. You get 30 bids which refreshes after a month. The detail of the description of each project make it easy for you to distinguish which project to bid to. I only have used 15 bids in 20 days.

If you have a specialty or are really good with softwares, it gets easier. People search for people who can edit, create, support their website and the pay is big. I'm thinking of getting some html classes too.

What I like most about Freelancer is that they do not impose a fee for posting/ accepting projects. You can get several employees with one post and do not have to pay the website a commission.

I visit Freelancer more often than I do Facebook.

The yellow digital road so far

It doesn’t take much to discourage me. When I first didn’t get the love of my 12 year old life, I thought I would be forever single and never have a wonderful life. 2 dozen years later and thousands of heart fragments missing, I realized life is not on my side.

I had a great childhood, but I guess I’m, just a wimp who immediately cries with a scratch. I get up and try my best after whining to anybody at reach. That’s why people around me has stopped giving me bad news or treat me to great food before dropping the bomb.

I’m 1st week in my attempt to dominate some corner in this digital world. The result s were ugly. Nobody accepts my bid to work for them, when I get tested I get turned down for crappy work, and I’m spending without earning. My yellow brick road to success seems grayer today.

I stopped applying for jobs. I was too depressed, I needed space and time. I became the little boy again who has to cry before moving on. I hate myself.

What I appreciate about being turned is being told as why I was turned down. My jokes were perverted, what I wrote wasn’t catchy, my work smelled so amateur they hired the next not so good guy who applied for the same job.

It hurts not being acknowledged, but I tell my self that if I were to hire someone for the jobs applied to, I wouldn’t have picked me as well.

During this time I had to move out of the City I lived in and go to the country side to minimize my expenses. I found a relative willing to take me in. I would use this to time to hone my skills.

My whining is over. Get ready Internet. Here’s my second try.

How much should I save before I retire

When I quit my job I thought about permanently retiring. If I had won the lottery then you wouldn’t be reading my blog. I would have traveled in a heart beat to some foreign country where a translator is a requirement. But you aren’t hallucinating, and are reading my blog so that means I have to get my millions first.

Now I’ve decided to try freelancing/ I-don’t’-really-know-what-I’m-doing, my financial status have changed. True I never know when I would get any money, but I have less expense now. There is no need to commute from home to office and no more over priced lunches. Still I want to retire someday. I want 20 years of no work before I die.

I read somewhere before you retire you have to take account your current expenses and adjust it with inflation then multiply it to the number of years you plan to retire. My monthly expenses cost 10,000 ($250) when I was still working. I’m still single now and I plan to have only two children (any more and I would consider parricide). I’m guessing I need to multiply my current expenses by three adjust that to the inflation rate then multiply to the number of years.

I know a lot of people don’t like math. But I like teasing people so I made a table of how my computation looked like.

30,000 (estimated expenses with kids involved) x 110% (5% inflation for the 22 years I would work before I retire) x 12 (months in year) x 20 years (my retirement time) = 151,200,000 ($3,360,000).

Wow. Damn the inflation. Damn future children. I had to wash my face after computing. I had a computation once that did not factor in the inflation. It was a third of what is written above. The good news about this is that I now know how much I need. So if I get that number, god knows how, I can stop working.

Now we go to the meat of this blog. I now compute how much I need to earn in a selected time frame.

Total amount divided by time frame = (((151,200,000/22)/12)/30)

In a year I need to earn 6,872,727, or 572,727 in a month, or 19,090 a day. I need to earn 19,090 tomorrow. How the heck do I do that? Plus I just realized I might need to kill myself if I am still alive 20 years after retirement. I never understood why people hate Math, until now. My parents never earned that much money. I fear its not in my genes too.

I am now not above in asking for donations. Please message me if you want to be my friend who will love you and your money.