Trying to Earn "Pin" Money

4/10/2016

Last week I had the bright idea, or so it seemed at the time, of trying to do transcribing from home.  I had through most of my career, transcribed a lot of things, including multi-person conversations.

I found that there is a whole host of opportunities for transcribing.  I filled out an "application" with one company and passed their typing test with a 73 wpm.  Apparently, I've still got it!  Mother always told me that the reason I could type so fast was that my fingers were so small.  I'm not sure that's the real reason.  I think it might have something to do with the fact that I've been typing since 1967!!
Practically a dinosaur.

I receive an email last night with instructions of how they want the sample transcription to be set up.  I read the style guide and was lost almost immediately.  You put a comma here, numbers one to ten written out, don't abbreviate this, but do abbreviate that.  The list of requirements for the sample document was overwhelming.  At the end of each line put in a time stamp (huh?).  All I wanted to do was type what was recorded.  I didn't realize that you had to go through all this nonsense just to earn nickels and dimes for each word typed.

I really wanted to earn some extra "pin" money to use for manicures, etc.  Even before looking into transcribing from home, I also looked at part-time jobs in offices.  The list of duties, all of which I have done at one time or another, sounded daunting to me.  

What is clear to me is that I don't have what it takes anymore to work in an office.  Okay, maybe that's not true.  What I can't do is work in a stress related environment.  If I was able to go to an office and work alone on some data entry project, for instance, I think I would be fine.  But answering phones, arranging meetings, and all the other required myriad secretarial duties is something I am no longer able to do.  

It guess it's true when Jeff tells people that I'm fragile.  I forget more than I remember and don't deal at all well with stress of any kind.  I'm better off emotionally staying at home and letting Jeff do all the heavy emotional lifting for me.

P