No Work = Loss of Motivation
I've been very lucky - have had fantastic amounts of work, worked on great stuff, and worked with good people. But as things go when you're freelancing, it's the week after Thanksgiving, and its been a very slow one.
I've had no paid work for over a week, but the worst is I thought I had work fri, sat and sun and only found out on thurs that I didn't. I still worked at my intership on tues and wed, but the rest of the week has been v slow. I've tried to be productive - catch up on all the things around the house that needed doing - like food shopping and cleaning and getting a new bathmat cos the old one was really bad. But with downtime, I get totally unmotivated.. it's like swimming through treacle and it takes me back to the first month I was here when things were quite difficult and there was no work on the horizon.
Some things have been achieved - I called all my relatives for Thanksgiving, and so made contact with all of them, which was nice. I got a bookshelf and some curtains from the offices where I'm doing the internship, so my room is a little more furnished. These go along nicely with my bed - purchased from a guy upstairs who was moving back home - so no more air mattress for me!!
I've also managed to beat the bureaucracy and open a bank account. Opening an account here since Sept 11 has been very difficult. America relies only on the banking records within this country, and yet to prove I lived where I did, I needed to get a bank statement sent from Australia with my address here on it. I can't get a credit card, because I have no credit history in the states - doesn't matter how good my credit is back home. So the best I can do is to pay my cell phone bill on time every time and eventually take out a small loan with my bank against my own money and pay it back. Then, and only then will they think about giving me a credit card.
So I went to open my account three times before they'd let me - you'd think I wanted to convert religions or something. Finally on Thanksgiving eve I went to my local branch in Harlem to open my account. It took 2 hours... because everyone was in there trying to get money the day before the holiday, or trying to get credit - bad day to go to a bank, especially when the banking system here relies almost entirely on cheques.
That's right - cheques. You can't transfer money to other people's accounts easily - and don't even think about it if they aren't with your bank. In fact even if they are, but in another state, forget about it. You write a cheque for everything, and because credit cards aren't easy to get either, you pay a lot of your bills with cheques.
So I set up my account, and deposit a cheque. I should be able to write my room mates a cheque for the rent, right? Wrong - because it's a new account and I may still be some kind of evil doer (despite the fact I'm depositing money) they're holding most of my cheque for 6 days..
Luckily I have understanding roommates..
I've had no paid work for over a week, but the worst is I thought I had work fri, sat and sun and only found out on thurs that I didn't. I still worked at my intership on tues and wed, but the rest of the week has been v slow. I've tried to be productive - catch up on all the things around the house that needed doing - like food shopping and cleaning and getting a new bathmat cos the old one was really bad. But with downtime, I get totally unmotivated.. it's like swimming through treacle and it takes me back to the first month I was here when things were quite difficult and there was no work on the horizon.
Some things have been achieved - I called all my relatives for Thanksgiving, and so made contact with all of them, which was nice. I got a bookshelf and some curtains from the offices where I'm doing the internship, so my room is a little more furnished. These go along nicely with my bed - purchased from a guy upstairs who was moving back home - so no more air mattress for me!!
I've also managed to beat the bureaucracy and open a bank account. Opening an account here since Sept 11 has been very difficult. America relies only on the banking records within this country, and yet to prove I lived where I did, I needed to get a bank statement sent from Australia with my address here on it. I can't get a credit card, because I have no credit history in the states - doesn't matter how good my credit is back home. So the best I can do is to pay my cell phone bill on time every time and eventually take out a small loan with my bank against my own money and pay it back. Then, and only then will they think about giving me a credit card.
So I went to open my account three times before they'd let me - you'd think I wanted to convert religions or something. Finally on Thanksgiving eve I went to my local branch in Harlem to open my account. It took 2 hours... because everyone was in there trying to get money the day before the holiday, or trying to get credit - bad day to go to a bank, especially when the banking system here relies almost entirely on cheques.
That's right - cheques. You can't transfer money to other people's accounts easily - and don't even think about it if they aren't with your bank. In fact even if they are, but in another state, forget about it. You write a cheque for everything, and because credit cards aren't easy to get either, you pay a lot of your bills with cheques.
So I set up my account, and deposit a cheque. I should be able to write my room mates a cheque for the rent, right? Wrong - because it's a new account and I may still be some kind of evil doer (despite the fact I'm depositing money) they're holding most of my cheque for 6 days..
Luckily I have understanding roommates..
