JOB SEEKING DIARY

 Let's start with why I started working from home 31 years ago.  When I met my daughter's father, I thought I'd met this really great guy who worked as a youth counselor.  I admit I assumed if this guy worked with troubled kids, that he had to be a fairly nice man.  I had NO idea when I met him he'd actually be in prison for armed robbery, drug use and having been a pimp when he was younger.  All that, and more, was revealed to me once I became married and pregnant by this man. 

Once we were married, all disguises were off in his book because he felt I was chained to him now.  This meant he confessed everything about his past to me, as well as he stopped taking his bipolar medication just like that.  No tapering - just stopped.  

Meaning I was pregnant and now was living with a dangerous maniac.  At one of my pre-natal appointments, my doctor asked to speak to me alone.  He told me with this man's history of drug use going back to when he was eight years old, this affects how a person's brain develops.  The drug use he felt not only affected his brain's development, but also damaged it.  I was told stories of people who suddenly just go "off" one day, murder everyone in sight - and then they snap out of it with no recollection of what they've just done.  So my doctor is now warning me to "just run".  He also told me in his experience bipolars don't stay on their medications for long periods of time, and they're more dangerous when they suddenly go off the meds than just being off them.  

Which explained a lot.  I was working as a paralegal when I met him with designs to become an attorney.  Problem was he would locate where I was working and then just pop over to accuse my boss of sleeping with me and threatening violence.  This got me fired of course so many times I started working for a temp agency.  That way when he'd either show up and threaten to harm the attorney, or he'd blow up their office phones by calling me every five minutes asking what I was doing, I'd just be able to move to another job, and another, and another.  

Which was fine until I realized to protect my child and myself physically - I had no choice but to leave.  Since statistically you're more likely to be murdered when you leave these men - that was when I was going to be truly in danger was when he realized I was gone.  This was why planning my escape and new life was going to have to be thought out very carefully so I couldn't be found again.  

But right before I was to give birth, he was given a job as a probation officer.  This meant anywhere I went, he'd be able to locate where I was living and working by my social security number.  Back in 1991, they didn't have the laws allowing me to change my social security number when fleeing abuse.  Trust me - I asked.  I had more than one conversation with the social security people begging them to let me change my social security number but my pleas fell on deaf ears.  

Which is why I chose to move into a really cheap apartment building full of a lot of undocumented workers because then I wasn't asked for my legal name to put on the lease.  A few attorneys who I'd worked with and felt I was a very good paralegal with a future as an attorney, told me they'd give me work I could do from home and they'd pay me off the books.  This was how I was able to live in peace and work once I left my ex-husband.  After 13 ignored restraining orders, I knew there was no other way I was going to not wind up splattered all over the sidewalk, or worse, my child harmed or worse.  

I was living in Sherman Oaks when the 1994 earthquake hit in an apartment building shared by my grandmother and mother.  My grandmother had got a job as an apartment manager, so she was able to move me into a nicer building without reporting me to the credit bureaus.  My mom was able to then babysit while I entered the "fast track" to becoming an attorney.  This was before online school - so I was having to physically go into school which wasn't going to let me drag in a toddler to class.  By having my mother right there, I was able to have her come sit with my daughter while I attended class.  

When the earthquake hit, my ex-husband came to check on my mother and grandmother, and learned I was living there as well from one of the tenants.  I remember entering the court yard to see them sitting by the pool shooting the breeze, and realizing he knew we lived there now.  It had taken me almost three years just to get all of us into the same building, and I knew it wouldn't be easy to duplicate such a mass tenancy anywhere else while everyone else was moving who had also lost their home in the earthquake - so my mother, grandmother, and myself with the baby in tow all stuffed into u-hauls and moved to Las Vegas.  

I went to apply for some paralegal jobs in Las Vegas only to find out if you work for one firm/attorney, you then can't work for another one for five years.  This is because the mob basically created a system where information on their cases couldn't be easily spread about town, and to prevent FBI agents from pretending to be paralegals to get hired at a firm defending their case.  So I continued to work remotely for California attorneys once we moved to Las Vegas to pay the rent.  

Why continue working remotely?  Simple.  My daughter had shown signs of ADHD by this time and no daycare wanted to take her because she was "too difficult to handle".  So now I really don't have a choice - I have to work from home until she's of school age at least.  Even once school starts and they're let out about 1 pm in Vegas, no law office is going to let me be home by 1 pm.   Meaning I didn't see a way to continue working and care for my daughter as a single mom without continuing to work from home.  

After we had moved to Las Vegas, my grandmother got terminal cancer.  She needed care.  Someone had to deal with her doctors, her nurses, make sure she was bathed and fed, and all of that scene.  Once I buried her in 2004, then my mother developed cancer.  Then came her stroke and I was having to deal with the nursing homes and the tests and surgeries - and all that came with her slow death.  Then my daughter developed health issues which meant I literally could not leave her alone.  By this time, the only time I was able to work to keep our rent paid was once everyone was asleep.  Leaving me to continue to work from home on a freelance basis as the years start adding up.

Then came my own health problems.  I know now I had shingles.  But for 15 years, I didn't.  I had doctors see me as a cash cow for tests being done and procedures and pain management, and now I"m going in and out of doctors offices a few times a week for one reason or another.  Continuing my need to feed the kid dinner, put her to bed, and then go to work.  By this time, my legs and feet are swelling so badly I can't wear shoes.  If you can't wear anything but slippers, no law firm is going to have you working in their office.  So I continue working from home until my daughter is now 31 years old.  

Through a series of miracles, I was seen by a nurse who said to me about six months ago, "That looks like shingles".  I was given an anti-viral and voila!  I can bend my knees once again, and the swelling has gone away so I can wear shoes again.  Miracles of miracles I can walk again.  My mother and grandmother have passed away.  My daughter is now an adult and caring for herself although she still lives with me.  My ex-husband has become gay and is now living with his boyfriend so I'm the last thing on his mind now.  Thankfully, I can now wear shoes and walk again.  I'm out of shape - but I can walk again.  

Covid wiped out my client pool.  Over ten attorneys who I've been working for all these years have either just disappeared off the face of the earth, or died.  I've essentially been disabled and working under the table now for 31 years.  As a paralegal, that means I have a great deal of experience and skill.  About six months ago, it's like I woke up and realized I have no work coming in.  Sole practitioners in California are so pressed financially right now, they're just burning paralegals right and left on their pay.  

Meaning if I want to keep working, the only way I see to do this is to find a mid to large size law firm who I know can pay me honestly to work for.  However, those types of firms want you to come into the office to work.  I now can wear shoes and this is the first time I'm not caring for someone full-time.  So I start putting together a resume and looking for work thinking some firm will be happy to get someone with my experience and skills to come work for them.

Only what do I use as a work reference?  Who do I list I've worked for over the last 31 years?  I decide to just tell the truth - I've worked freelance for the last 31 years.  My clients are dead.  

We hear that the workforce is desperate to hire people.  I was talking to a girlfriend and she said my looking to re-enter the workforce at now 61 years of age as a survivor of domestic abuse, and someone who has overcome serious health issues and disability, would make an interesting blog to document the process.  

So come join me.  We hear how domestic abuse survivors are supposed to "overcome" their ordeal and "survive".  We love to hear someone disabled is now healthy again.  We love to hear someone who has been trapped in the house essentially for 31 years is now putting their life back together.  

But will the employers see things that way?  I'll document the process here as we find out.