North America

by

Gambles

The late winter and early spring of 2004 has been on my mind lately. It was the time that I was turning 25, a bigger milestone for me than 20 had been. 35 is coming up fast and it feels more significant to me than 30 did.

2004 was the late winter/early spring that I gravely injured my right hand, had a bad car accident (again, not even remotely my fault), learned that I was going to be an aunt for the first time, and took what was probably the biggest gamble of my life up to that point.

I was working at what I still think was my dream job as the “office administrator/whatever they needed me to do because I was trained for absolutely everything including the outdoor jobs” for a private company managing the recreational services of a national park.

No two days were ever the same. I could be balancing the books one day and the next be on snowshoes marking a new trail through the wilderness.

The problem was that I was overworked, unappreciated, and really underpaid. Any one of those alone I could have handled, but combined I knew that it was time to get out of there get a ‘grown up’ job, ie. one that I didn’t like much but which would pay well.

So I had started to apply for jobs with the federal government. It was sometime in late February or early March of 2004 that I was asked to interview for a position I had applied for nearly a year before.

The initial testing went well and then came an interview that took most of a day and involved role playing. I was a timid creature back then with zero self esteem and yet the minute I picked up the first fake call I knew I had the job.

It took weeks for the confirmation to come through, to set a start date, and to have an idea of when the first paycheque would come, but before any of that gelled, I took a gamble.

I was driving a beat up old car (that was even worse for wear after the accident) and I decided to buy myself a brand new car for my 25th birthday, my first Hyundai Accent (which I liked more than my second even if it was an odd looking thing).

To this day, I have no idea how I got the financing on it because there was absolutely no way I could afford the payments! But the first payment on it would be mid-May, around the time that I would get a first paycheque from the government job… if I got the job, of course.

Everything fell into place, the way it does when it’s meant to be, and I never had any trouble making payments on that sweet little car.

It’s hard to reconcile how much I’ve done and seen with the smallness of time that has passed since that spring, with the only tangible evidence of it being the hard little knot of scar tissue on the pad of my right ring finger that is finally starting to soften a little.

But in that span of time I moved to a second government job, bought a house, lost my dad, quit the government, took off on the adventure of a lifetime, and saw more of the continent than that bitter girl of 25 ever dared dreamed she’d see.

I wish I could go back and tell that angry girl I used to be just how brave she was as she accepted the keys to her new car. Little did she know they were the keys that would open up her world and bring her to the life she’d always wanted but was convinced she did not deserve.

I’ve taken a lot of gambles since then, and each one gets easier and is less breathtaking. The first plunge is always the hardest and the real gamble I took in 2004 wasn’t buying the car. It was daring to see a future that was more open than the confines of the present. That’s a lesson that has obviously stayed with me.

But I’m not contemplating any gambles on this cold second day of spring of 2014. My life is plugging along just the way I want it to and I feel a confidence in my future that used to elude me.

Power is going into Haven in the next week or two, if the weather will just cooperate (earlier than expected, but it’s what works best for the electrician), so provided I can get the gravel smoothed out quickly, I could be back on my property within three weeks (!).

I’m casually shopping for a new-to-me RV (tiny bumper pull trailer), exploring both RV and non-RV travel options for next winter, planning summer trips, and working insane hours at a business that went from struggling to thriving in the span of a winter.

I definitely don’t need to be taking any gambles right now.

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Kiss of the Zephyr

Spring seems to be settling into southern Saskatchewan even as the eastern part of the continent is still getting pounded by snow.

The weather has been mild here for days, the wind almost gentle, and the snow is vanishing rapidly. Spring in rural southern Saskatchewan is very icy, muddy, and smelly.

With longer and warmer days, my energy levels are peaking and I cannot wait to get back outside and work on my property. It’s been a long winter of typing at my desk and I am eager to spend more time outside, working the kinks out of dormant muscles.

It’s nice to be back in temperatures where the electric heaters are sufficient to keep the rig very cozy. I tend to wake up every time the furnace goes off and therefore need very long nights to make up for the broken sleep. Not having needed the furnace in about a week, I’m seeing my sleep needs go down dramatically. Couple that with the extra hours of sunshine and I’m slowly shifting back into summer mode of needing less sleep and getting up earlier.

I’m six to eight weeks away from moving Miranda back to Haven, where I’ll be able to assess the damage from the winter. I know for certain I have some roof leaks to attend to. I also need to empty out all my cabinets and make sure there isn’t any mould in the corners from melted frost. During one cold spell, I actually found clothing frozen to the back of the wardrobe!

It feels like a lifetime since I moved here in October and it’s good to be thinking of moving again in terms of weeks, not months. And yet, the time has flown by. It’s been a very insular winter and I am so eager and ready to get back out into the World.

That starts tomorrow, as I’m heading up to Stettler, Alberta, for a much needed long weekend away. I can’t wait to see Donna and Ken! I’ve planned out a different route to get there, just to shake things up a bit.

We’ll see how the building move and power installation goes, but if work keeps up the way it is, I look forward to my next long weekend off at the end of May, exploring the Black Hills. It’s on my calendar, so it could happen. 🙂

I’m glad that so many of you are on Facebook. I’ve acquired a taste for posting updates there as it is just so quick. But I do promise to ease back into more regular posting to the blog. This hiatus was just what I needed, but I rather miss signing onto WordPress and boring you all with the mundane details of my life. 🙂

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Haven Power Update

Getting power put in on my property, Haven, has been surprisingly difficult because none of the local electricians will return my phone calls or emails. The only person who replied to me was a guy in Moose Jaw whose estimate came in at $2,700…

A few days ago, Caroline showed me an ad in the local paper for a new electrician in Assiniboia, so I promptly contacted him.

To my surprise, he got right back to me and scheduled a time to come meet me at Haven!

The meeting happened this afternoon. We walked the property together, talked about my immediate and future needs, his availability, and the price.

He needs to crunch numbers and check the cost of the socket into which SaskPower will plug their meter, but he’s thinking the job should come in somewhere between $1,200 and $1,500. That’ll be for the exterior grade box, the socket, the outlets, his time, permits, etc., etc.

Best of all, he can fit me in as soon as the weather is clement. I told him that I want to aim for May 15thish!

I spent about 8 months of 2013 off the grid and I will concede that I am DONE with boondocking for the time being. 😀 The thought of leaving Laura’s yard and being able to move to a place with 30A service sounds like pure luxury!

Having decided that I am going away next winter (even if I haven’t figured out how or where exactly yet), power is going to be the biggest expense at Haven this summer. Another load of gravel and moving the buildings will be about a $500 expense total. That’s really all I feel like spending this summer and I want any extra earnings to go to travel and squirreling away for the winter.

It’s such a relief to have this item off my to-do list. Now, I need to start planning an “RV Park Chez Rae Has Power!” party for the beginning of June. 😀

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Tips For Freelancers on Screening Potential New Clients on Craigslist

As a freelancer, I have many resources for finding new contracts and clients, but I’ve had the most luck finding excellent clients through Craiglist. A lot of freelance information sites will say not to bother with Craigslist ads in the search for work, but I’ve really had more luck there than with cold emailing and specialized transcription and freelance job boards.

Yet, for every good company I’ve signed on with, like A and P Transcription, I’ve rejected at least five. I now have enough experience looking for work on Craiglist to quickly catch the companies that won’t be worth my time.

Let’s start with the ad. Very few companies put their details on the Craigslist ad, so for an initial review, I look at the kind of work that is expected and the pay, if that is included.

When I see an hourly rate for transcription, I know the client has no experience working with transcriptionists, so I send my stock email detailing my qualifications and explain that I charge per audio minute because it creates a flat fee for the project.

I very rarely get jobs from these kinds of ads because people who know nothing about transcription have no idea of how long it takes to do the work and can’t fathom that the $75 per audio hour rate only represents an hourly work rate of $18.75. And if they can, then they usually find that rate is way too much anyway.

I’ve probably gotten a half dozen jobs over the years from an ad like this and only one repeat client. I still reply to them because it takes just a minute of my time, but I don’t expect anything to come out of the email.

If a per minute rate is given in the ad, then that tells me the client likely knows a little about the transcription world. If the rate is half decent, then I send my stock email without mention of rates.

The second stage of screening comes when the prospective client replies to me. I am now going to give two concrete examples to explain why one seemingly promising email was rejected while one email with red flags turned into an ongoing job.

Last week, I replied to a Craigslist ad seeking experienced legal transcriptionists. The per minute rate was excellent, so I fired off an email. Sunday afternoon, I received an email containing instructions and attachments for a transcription test. The test was a of reasonable length with clear instructions and decent quality audio.

But the email had a huge red flag: absolutely no client information.

I have no problem spending a half hour completing a transcription test, it’s just part of the process of getting a client, but before I spend that time, I want to know if it’s a client I’ll want to work with. When there’s a transcription test involved, I’m dealing with a transcription firm, so there’s always information on the web about them. The transcription community is quick to review firms, both good and bad.

I pasted some of the text of the email into Google and found a link to a site that gave a lot of information about the company who sent the email. What I found was not good. There was an issue with lack of payment to transcribers as well as lawsuits under an old company name. Now, it appeared that the firm had reorganized itself under a new name.

Just in case my research was wrong, I replied to the email asking for the company for some information about themselves before I take the test. I don’t expect a reply.

Now, compare this to my experience with A and P Transcription.

The owner’s reply to my initial email gave her full company information. I was able search for reviews of A and P Transcription immediately. I found one red flag, a Rip Off Report post that claimed that the owner, Heather, had stiffed transcribers out of a lot of money.

But I wasn’t a government analyst all those years without being able to read between the lines. And there were a lot of lines to read between because Heather replied in great detail to the claims in the Rip Off Report. Based on the two stories, I was able to determine that the only thing she had done wrong was hire unprofessional people who didn’t deserve to be paid.

I agreed to take some work with her and started slowly to see if she would pay when she said she would. Absolutely!

I’ve been working with A and P Transcription since October of 2013 and am thrilled to be on board. Their rates aren’t great, but the work is steady, I have always been given as much as I wanted to take on, I am paid promptly, I can talk to Heather about any issues, and, best of all, I know the week before what the following week’s workload is going to look like. In the freelance world of feast or famine, steady work like this is a rare treasure.

After I finish today’s work with A and P, I have to start on a new assignment for a seemingly shady company that I also found through Craigslist last fall. I took a chance on them and am happy I did. The work is sporadic and pays in 60 days, but it’s interesting and the unexpected little injections into the cash flow are most welcome.

The takeaway from this is that when you’re going through Craigslist ads, it’s important to be cautious and to do a lot of research, but it definitely doesn’t pay to be cynical or to jump to conclusions without all the facts. I just about never bother with my other resources now!

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A Moment of Clarity

Unlike most full-time RVers, I am not living off retirement income and must still earn a living. So unlike most full-time RVers who are living their retirements, I am dreaming of mine.

When I talked to my financial planner in 2008 about the idea of going full-time, he told me that I could afford several years of wild abandon with no concern about my future, but if I wanted to be able to retire, I’d have to buckle down within five to ten years in terms of retirement contributions and, ideally, acquire a little real estate.

In a perfect world, I could wander for the rest of my life and die grinning on a tropical beach in a far flung corner of the globe, but the reverse could also be true. I could find myself sick and forced to stop my wandering ways. Property and a nest egg would provide peace of mind in future travels because I’d have the assurance that I could take care of myself if the worst happened.

So we put together a five to ten year plan that had me living in my RV, traveling the continent, and hopefully building a business. Some parts of the project turned out better than others, especially the most important one: seeing the continent.

I’ve seen enough to accept something I’ve known since the fall and which I’ve shared with a few people since then: Miranda is likely never going back on the road. It’s five years sooner than expected, but here is the reasoning behind that:

-She needs about $6,000 worth of work to pass the mechanical inspection that would allow her to be plated in Saskatchewan.

-With my income, spending that kind of money on a depreciating asset at my age is an unsound financial decision.

-Because of the damage from the 2012 accident, I was warned by my insurance company that another collision would likely result in Miranda being a write-off. The idea of spending $6,000 and having her be destroyed is terrifying. The house part of her is in excellent shape and I’d be an idiot to risk it when she is parked somewhere she doesn’t have to move (much). The thought of moving to a new residence is unappealing me because I am so comfortable here. I therefore want Miranda to continue being my primary residence for as long as possible.

-$6,000 would go a long way towards developing my property and giving me a place to retire to at a time in the future when living in Miranda will no longer be sensible.

-I have absolutely no pleasure driving a big RV anymore and the thought of never again taking to the roads in a 60′ rig fills me with relief.

-Finally, winters are getting increasingly erratic and cannonball runs south and north in the spring just don’t seem worth the effort or the expense when southern U.S. winter conditions aren’t that great anyway.

That said, my traveling days are most certainly NOT done! And, really, if $10,000 were to fall into my lap right now, I’d get Miranda back on the road. It’s something I want, but not badly enough to put myself into a pickle for it.

Now, here comes the moment of clarity that I had a few weeks ago.

I have seen a lot of this continent, but I’m always rushing through this middle section, especially on the U.S side. Much like my year in Alberta let me see a really significant part of that province, my time here could allow me to see quite a bit of the Plains.

There are so many things I want to see in the U.S. that are just a day’s drive away, like the Black Hills and Yellowstone National Park. These are things to see in summer not winter, spring, or fall, the times I’m normally traveling to this area. Now, I am perfectly positioned to go explore these places in the summer!

Not having been to the U.S. this past winter and if I don’t go there next winter for an extended trip, I would be free to take a long weekend or two this summer to explore more of Montana and the Dakotas. For next summer, I could even plan a longer trip into Wyoming!

So where I stand now is that the budget for this summer will be focused on the cabin, with a little going to tourism on the side, just enough to keep me from going crazy.

Because I am already committed to spending another winter not traveling in an RV, I am going start looking early for a job for the winter, ideally somewhere I’ve never been, and take temporary accommodation if that pans out. Can anyone help me get a job on a cruise ship?! 😀

Another thought if business continues to pick up is to drive to Mexico with just my truck and rent an apartment there for the winter. In short, there are lots of possibilities!

I am also going to be watching the classifieds on both sides of the border for a small lightweight bumper hitch trailer, similar to the Casita my friend L has, that could be towed by my truck. So my RVing days are most certainly not done, they are just in a process of reorganization!

What’s important for me is to be on the move and to see new things. I’m grateful that my travels with Miranda have enabled me to find the perfect place for me to pause for a bit while I get things in order for the next phase of this wonderful life of mine. I am really enjoying my Saskatchewan interlude, but this is not the end of the road for me, just a breather.

Even though I’m not convinced that I’ll be traveling much, if at all, with Miranda from now on, I am going to continue this blog and suspect that now that all these thoughts have finally be committed to pixels, I’ll want to start writing more regularly again. After all, I am still living in an RV and I still have lots of RV living experience to share!

Thank you again to those who are as committed to my journey as I am, wherever it leads me.