S3 E32 Wednesday Mish Mash? What Happened to Tuesday?

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Good evening and welcome to the Comforting Voice podcast. I'm your host, Shasta Ray, and oh my gosh, it's Wednesday, it's not Tuesday. How did that happen? Holy cow, we're gonna talk about that tonight. But first, I am joined in the studio by Murray and Baxter, the cockatiels. I decided to set myself up for agony and have these two short little feathered terrorists join us tonight. It's amazing how such a small creature can wreak havoc. And you just enjoy it and take it because they're so cute and so endearing that you just take the abuse, whether it's cleaning up after them constantly or listening to their noise or their demands. No, these guys are these guys are really amazing. And birds aren't for everybody. They just aren't. But they're for me. I'll take all of them. If you got one you don't want, let me know. Also in the studio tonight, just outside the door, is the giant dog. He had a cookie, and I kicked him out because he breathes like Darth Vader, so we just didn't want that. So, wow. I do apologize first and foremost for this being Wednesday instead of Tuesday. I have a very feeble weak excuse for that, but I think it might make for interesting content and it fits in totally to what we are going to talk about tonight. Just a real quick reminder, check out the website, comfortingvoice.com, and due to all the chaos that makes it now Wednesday instead of Tuesday, um, I still haven't updated the website, like I said. Oh my gosh. I do have a good excuse, no matter how feeble. Okay, um, once you're there, you know, surf those links. Check it out. All of the coloring books I author myself, those are mine, that's my creation, and my pen name for my coloring books is Saffron Eve. So check that out, and there's links to all of those. The unique thing I have about my coloring books is that I make left-hand editions for all the lefties out there, and that's because they deserve an appropriate page spread when they're relaxing. And I've had some lefties test this, and they said, out of all the coloring books out there, this has been a game changer because they don't have to contort their arm, they don't have to fight with the book, and it's those little details like that that all of us right-handed people take for granted because the book's already set up for us, normally. So anyway, check that out. And if there's any lefties in your life, check out the left-handed editions of my coloring books. All of those are designed for like a disassociation type relaxation. They're not highly detailed. They are the bold and easy style, and they're a large print. That way you can just sit, disassociate, color in spaces, have fun, move on to the next one, get it done, and not fixate and stress on some of those tiny little details that some coloring books provide. You get this great idea, you want to sit down and relax and color, and before you know it, you're so stressed out on these tiny details, it's just difficult. So I made these with that in mind, and I have a lot more on the plate that I am in process on uh getting those published soon. So cross your fingers for me. One of the things I would like to do at the website is get some of our episodes sorted out because there's a feature that will allow me to put all of the books into one basic playlist so you can binge listen and get all of our books that way. Is that amazing or what? Wow! Oh my gosh. So stay tuned for that announcement when I get that far. Alright, let's get you comfortable. Are you ready to relax? Are you already relaxed? So you know the drill. You know the whole routine by now. Make sure that you've got everything you need at your fingertips, your listening device is set at that perfect volume for you for your situation. Are you gonna fall asleep? Are you just gonna kick back and relax and you've got some more activities in your day yet to accomplish? Or maybe you're just battling some insomnia and you needed a friend. Whatever the case, get comfy, put your feet up, make sure your beverage of choice is at your fingertips, extra pair of socks, teddy bear, sleep mask. Maybe you just need to take a load off and you just want to dim the lights a little bit, but you don't want to fall asleep. Whatever the case, do your thing, and when you're ready, engage in a really productive stretch. Just reach out your arms, your legs, engage all of those muscles through your hands, your feet, into your fingers and toes, flex everything really good. Make it a productive stretch. You know how to stretch, and then wiggle your fingers and toes right before you release that stretch. See, even Murray agrees. Next, one or two really good productive deep breaths of air. Inhale to about the count of four, hold it to about the count of three, top off that inhale with another quick inhale, just real quick, then hold it for another count of one or two, and exhale very slowly. If you can exhale to about the count of eight, that's perfect. But if six is good, just try to do it a little bit slower than that initial inhale, and that's another thing that's gonna kick your relaxation in and get you off to a good night's sleep, or just release tension and stress that's accumulated through the day. Whatever the case, treat yourself to that stretch and that deep breath of air. Most of us breathe very, very shallow, and we just don't get that oxygen exchange quite like we should as often as we should. You can do that through the day too, and that'll reset you and recharge you just in the moment, and it's a wonderful thing. Okay, next, we're gonna do a couple really quick ones. Oh my gosh. We don't have Emmy the mini macaw. So we've got your tea tag and your fortune cookie slip danger free. Your tea tag for the night. Sing from your heart. I like that. And your fortune cookie slip. You will always have good luck in your personal affairs. Congratulations on having good luck. I'm very happy for you. And the lucky numbers off of the back of the fortune cookie slip. Two, six, eight, ten, twenty-six, and twenty-seven. Good luck if you play any kind of lottery or number games. I hope you win big or at least win your money back. We'll get this safely into the archive receptacle there. And we have one extraordinarily happy cockatiel singing his heart out tonight. Kinda like the tea tag said. I guess he was listening. And um once he gets started, he doesn't like to stop, so I'm hoping he'll just kinda hang out with me. He doesn't tend to get quite as vocal if he's sitting on me. So we'll see how he reacts to the situation tonight. They may end up in the bird room. You never know. You're gonna behave yourself. Come here, Murray, you can come over here. Let's see who's been joining the fun on our listener base and take a look at the next three locations. Okay, so the first location of our listener base location list for join the fun is Nepal. Nepal is home to Mount Everest, the highest mountain on earth, but is also a country of incredible variety with tropical areas, forests, and mountains all within its borders. Nepal's flag is the only national flag in the world that is not rectangular. It is made of two stacked triangles, a shape inspired by the country's mountain heritage and unique identity. Nepal is home to living traditions of mountain communities who have adapted to some of the highest environments on earth, so if you're joining the fund from Nepal, you represent courage, individuality, and the incredible ability to thrive in extraordinary places. Next on our listener base list is Colombia. Colombia is one of the few countries where you can find Caribbean beaches, rainforest, grasslands, and snowy mountains all within the same nation. Colombia is the world's leading producer of emeralds, with some of the most valued emeralds ever discovered coming from Colombia. Colombia is one of the most biodiverse countries on earth with thousands of species found nowhere else. So if you're joining the fund from Colombia, you represent natural abundance, rare beauty, and a country full of hidden treasures. And last on the list for tonight is Ukraine. Ukraine is home to one of the largest aircraft ever built, a massive transport plane created for moving enormous cargo across the world. Ukraine is famous for its sunflower fields, and the sunflower holds a special place in the country's culture and identity. Ukraine has one of the deepest subway stations in the world built far underground as both transportation and a place of protection. So if you're joining the fund from Ukraine, you represent strength, ingenuity, and a spirit that continues to rise through challenges. And Baxter is just sitting here biting me at this point. What are you doing, little man? I don't have any food. Well, go eat your seeds. Alright, I know you've got a minute. I got a minute. The birds got a minute. Let's see what Lon sent in this week for got a minute.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

In life and among the chaos, we must learn to find the wings of our soul. The wings of my soul are my words, my ability to share. Daily I stumble through teetering stacks of them, carefully gleaning the ripest, most flavorful for my next verbiage, guided by sincere desire to have my words find the hearts in need. I dig deeply into the aging trunks of colloquial treasures. My satchel soon fills beyond the brim. But given the innumerable combinations I am prone to use most, and then the wings of my soul are my words. Thrive.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

That was very poetic. I loved that. Thank you, Lon. Awesome stuff. Oh my gosh. So what is up with Shasta not showing up on Tuesday? It's Wednesday mishmash. It was supposed to have been Tuesday mishmash. Well, things got crazy the past couple years. Really crazy. Our economy is just down the toilet as far as I'm concerned, and it's affecting so many Americans. So before I get into that and make it sound all ominous and disturbing and all that, I'll just give you the happy ending first. Are you ready for the happy ending? I finally have a new career. Yes I do. Oh my goodness. So anyhow, um let's just recap what I've been talking about with these episodes. And um the past few episodes I've kind of alluded to I was gonna do a follow-up on some earlier episodes, and I'll try to roll all this together so I don't ramble too awful much in the ramble chat, and we'll get back to the happy parts. Not quite two years ago, I was laid off of a job of 20 years, the economy tanked, and we were not bringing in money into the shop. The business almost completely folded. In fact, I thought it was gonna go under. And my employer, here again, of 20 years, had to hand me that layoff slip. So it started as a job attached layoff where I was supposed to come back on when sales picked up again, and they never picked up again. So eventually that job attached unemployment benefit ran out, and I was on the normal unemployment benefits where you have to apply for a job and beat yourself up in that sense. Oh my gosh, high stress, high stress. So I was going through all that, and at one point in time I go to login and request my meet my weekly payment. It said I was eligible for benefits for five more months, and lo and behold, you can't have a benefit. You are out of money. By the way, you made enough money at your job that we paid out larger payments. It used up whatever was set aside for my benefit. And they don't give you any warning. It's just kind of like, good luck, try not to die, enjoy your life. Maybe we'll see you under a bridge one day. Like, there's they don't care. They just it is uncaring. All of the government-assisted programs are like that. And I swear to God, the people are either so exasperated or they just hate people enough that they will deliberately do things to make it worse on you. And that's no joke. I experienced that with a few different government agencies meant to help people. Wow. Now I'm gonna state right now, it wasn't just me. This is happening. I have talked to so many people that are having the same problems and the same amount of luck and the same treatment over and over and over. And I'm not sure what's something's gotta change with our economy because this is I don't see how this can continue. So anyway, the first of those two episodes I referenced was talking about if you need to make ends meet, go find a job where they hire, go find a job where they hire young people, teenagers, that sort of thing. Sometimes they hire middle-aged people, you know, whatever it may be. So I went to one of those jobs. Most toxic, hostile environment I have ever worked in, ever. And eventually I did I have a tough skin. Things don't usually get to me, but that got to me. The lying, the gaslighting, all of the things they were doing to people because they would pick favorites and then make the non-favorites miserable until they quit. And that was their entire approach to getting uh the employees they wanted. I don't agree with it, and I think it's abusive, but people do it. So I went back to my employer that laid me off and begged, and I mean I begged. Is there any way you can give me at least some part-time employment? I'll work in the shop, I'll sweep the floor, whatever. I don't care. I just need employment so I can quit this place. And she knew I was right, because she's known me for so many years. So she created a position, I quit, and I've been working for her ever since. But I did watch another employee get just abused like crazy at that place. Here again, gaslighting, lying, um, accusations that weren't true, so they would have reasons to write this individual up. And the list goes on. It was phenomenal. I couldn't believe what I was looking at most days, but then we found out they were doing it to other employees as well. Eventually, this friend of mine got fired. They found reasons, they looked hard enough and they fabricated and connected dots enough that they were finally able to just fire my friend, who's 22 years old and does everything in their power to, you know, they're just a good worker, but they have some disabilities, and this place did not want to deal with someone with disabilities. It was an inconvenience to them. So my friend finally just got a job, thank goodness they'll be starting soon. And somewhere in all of this, somewhere in the middle, an acquaintance of mine told me to look into a certain type of work. And at first I was just like, why would I do that? I I'm not interested, I don't know anything about it, that sounds just something totally foreign to my mind, right? And I thought about it, and I thought, well, maybe I should look into that. I don't know anything about it. It's totally foreign to my mind. Maybe I would like it. So I looked into it, and by golly, there was a lot of matches on the skill set for what the job entails. So I signed up for just another online training class of some skills, I'm thinking. This was a full-blown training course. Then I had to take a legal uh test that was completely insane, off the charts stressful, and I passed the test. I passed my background check, I passed my credit check, and now I have a fun-filled career in the back-end operations aspects of the mortgage industry. Yes, I do. So I'm part of the mortgage. I'm part of the process when you purchase a house and you get a mortgage for buying that house. I am one of the geeks that's in the middle of all that, that does some of the paperwork and all of the office nerd into things that most people just don't want to do. But for me, this is heaven. This is the best job I could have ever come up with for myself, let alone it's a career. I'm not just an employee. So, you get set up with a company that represents you. I got fully trained by this company, and just this week I was approved to start actually working. For real. I'm through my training. Yay, it has taken a very long time. But I am looking forward to this. I am enjoying it so far, and my employer has been incredibly supportive through all of it. She's understood the process I'm going through with all the learning, the licensing, onboarding with a company, more training with the company, and here we are, it's Wednesday and not Tuesday. So how's this all fit in with me not being here yesterday? I was tired. That's it. I was so tired I had such a full day, and I was so close to being approved for work, for actual work. And it's been almost two years. It was such a stress off of my head that after the the work part of my learning and engagement was done for the day, I sat down, and that's all I remember, and I woke up at about 1 30 in the morning, and I thought, oh my gosh, I gotta get to bed, I have to get up, I have to actually work tomorrow. And then I had this secondary thought of, wait a minute, I never did the podcast tonight. So I thought maybe all of you would just give me a little leeway on this one thing because wow, almost two years of looking for adequate income, and I think I finally found it. So here we are, and today is my way of recapping all of that. And if you do go where you're gonna get some sort of job that's gonna hire you on without a resume, my advice to you ask questions and anything they offer or state in the way of your hours, anything, make sure you get it in writing so that they cannot go back on it. Or if you get a manager that just decides they don't like you as much as that other employee that they've known longer, or whatever unfair practice that they may be engaging in, make sure you've got something to back yourself up in case you need to take this to a higher level to their HR or something like that. The second episode I put out on this was kind of a follow-up, and I talked about knowing your own worth and seeing some of this stuff and understanding when you run across some of this weird bogus stuff in these weird places with management that you don't know who was hired or how they got that job. A lot of these people get hired as a teenager, move up through the ranks, and they just don't screw up and they don't leave. So you get someone that just doesn't care or they don't have adequate training, and now that's your boss, and they're in it for Their own purposes, they may never have had any kind of empathy training or even know what empathy is for that matter. And if you don't ask questions on scheduling, if you don't ask questions on availability on some of these, the job I was at, you had to set your availability 100% for the week. Otherwise they used it they otherwise they used it as a reason to justify treating you poorly. The reason you're not getting hours is because you don't have full availability. And I said, Well I work another part-time job, I'm in my fifties, I have a mortgage to pay. They don't care. Not their problem. You have to have full availability for their haphazard scheduling practices, and that still doesn't guarantee anything, nothing. If you find yourself in a situation like this, double down on your job applications and ask everybody you know. If they work in a company that might be taking on new hires, a lot of times you're gonna have to find a foot in the door somehow. Find someone in that industry, in a company, and a lot of times when you apply online, it just goes into never never land. That company may have a thousand applications for that one position. You don't know. But if you have a contact there, or you go in and you manage to talk to somebody, you might get routed and might be able to get your resume in front of a live body. You have to dig harder and deeper these days. It is a crazy world. And if you see anybody struggling like this with employment, trying to find employment, try to be empathetic and understanding. I am telling you, ageism is real, and people can be as selective as they want with who they hire. They can hire for any reason they want or don't want, and the application process is just maddening. You may have even better luck looking through a temp service that places people. There's all kinds of options besides just the regular application grind. And then here again, do some searches online. Another thing I did was I continually drilled AI chat bots like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok for ideas on places that I could apply or jobs that my skill set would be appropriate for. It took a while, but I finally found it. And I am telling you people, last night was such a strange anomaly because of that milestone I hit with this whole journey, and my body just gave it up and needed to sleep. And it did. I don't even know if I was watching TV. I don't know what I was doing. I sat down in the bird room and the next thing I know I woke up, I had Murray sitting there looking at me, pecking my face, and Baxter was sitting close by, all the budgies were still out, Emmy was on her stand, she was mad at me. Oh my gosh. I had to get everyone in bed and then I had to get up early so I could work. Oh gosh, today was the actual first day of true work. So that's my happy ending. I am just starting this new journey, and here again I just want to offer some condolences for anyone that's going through something similar or having similar experiences. You can always find something if you dig deep enough and look hard enough, and it might be maddening for a while. You may have to go back to an old employer and ask if there's grunt work you can do just so you can have a little sanity instead of going to an abusive job. Whatever the case, keep looking and keep doing your best. Keep asking your friends, keep asking family if anyone knows of any employment that they could refer you to. And that's exactly how I found this. I eventually asked someone that said, You would be a really great fit for my industry. And even then, in all of my stress, I didn't think I could do it. I didn't think I had the qualifications, I didn't think I would like it, and I had to find the right part of the industry that was a good fit. And when it was a good fit, everything clicked into place, and I'm very happy. Oh my gosh, I'm so happy. So that's my little adventure. And then last, I want to say if you've got a great position, you've got a great job you like, you're making adequate income with, count your blessings because it's hard. It is really hard these days. Understand what kind of a gem that truly is. And even if you're in a job where you're just kind of burned out, you're kind of, eh, I want something different, well, start looking. Don't be afraid to. There is nothing that says you can't start ramping up for something different and start looking. You never know what will come your way. And then if you do have a great opportunity, make sure that you go through the exit process on your current job so that you don't burn any bridges. Even if you don't like it, even if you don't like your boss, anything like that. You want that squeaky clean history as much as possible these days. Sometimes it's frustrating, and sometimes you just want to say the heck with it and just storm out and never look back. But don't shoot yourself in the foot and remind yourself that you're just in a frustrated place, possibly, and you're gonna come out the other side. I wish everyone out there the best employment and the best income for your situation and for your life, and I truly believe that there is a good fit for everybody out there. It just may not be a total slam dunk finding that good fit. So keep it up, keep the faith, you've got this, and in the meantime, it's worth it, and all that hard work is gonna pay off, you're gonna land yourself where you need to be, and you're gonna be better for it in some way. I hope this has been of use to somebody out there. If not, I hope somebody is snoozing soundly out there, whatever the case is. I'm gonna get this edited into your eardrums, and we'll see you on Friday. And I promise this time I won't forget, I won't fall asleep, and I think I finally got all of that stress finally in the past. So that's all I've got for tonight, and until Friday, sleep tight, good night, and bye bye.