If I hadn't lost my job, I probably would never have written my first book. Way back when, I was a medical transcriptionist. Trained for it, practiced it for almost three years total and enjoyed it. I worked (the second time around) for a company out of Massachusetts, and I worked at home. Because of the health issues I have, working at home is essential to me. Transcribing was also perfect, since I enjoy doing it, and it definitely is a meaningful job. Some jobs don't fulfill people because they can't see the end result of what they do. Transcription is not one of those jobs. It was fun and it was educational, and it paid decently, though not as much as some might think. Unfortunately, medical transcription as an industry faces several challenges, outsourcing to workers in places like India and this new trend for electronic medical records, for example. Also, there is a declining workpool and declining pay. I was happily plugging along back in the middle of June 2008 when all of a sudden the account I'd worked on for close to two years dried up. Right after the doctors opened a new practice...okey doke. I repeatedly asked my supervisor what was going on and for new work, but got the runaround. I figured the work was probably heading overseas and the company didn't want anyone to know. After struggling until September '08, sometimes only typing 7-8 lines per DAY (versus 1,500), I gave it up and moved on to another company. I hadn't been there long when the account I'd been placed on went to another transcription company and, you guessed it, no more job for me. The owners of the company I worked for were extremely nice, but nice doesn't pay the bills. The last day I transcribed was November 10th, 2008.
I did the typical job searching thing for about six months, and talk about suffering - our finances plunged! I finally decided, given the horrendous downturn the economy was taking, that it might be time to start my own business. I had started making general notes on the first book, just dawdling around, but didn't think writing a book was a serious option for me. I mean, seriously. A flipping book??? ME??? Naw, I couldn't possibly do that. Could I? The idea started to formulate but in the meantime, ye old bank balance was dipping low, and so the idea of Streetlight Genealogy was born. I love doing genealogy - have done it since I was a child, literally. It is something I'm good at, and something there is a market for. We happen to be close to Kentucky, which is a hot bed for genealogy, and I thought it might work. I put all my cards on the table, took steps to get ready to advertise, joined societies, got business cards and the website up, and then, when I was about one week away from advertising for clients, fate intervened once again. We faced a family crisis that took me completely and totally away from genealogy.
After about a month of this intense, private, hurtful crisis, things came to a head and I pulled away from my family to lick my wounds. I withdrew, became bitter, and literally fell onto the writing of the book as a salve, a balm. I could lose myself in the book and not have to think about the hurt. Before I knew it, I was turning out good material, and the book was truly starting to come to life. I was taking the hours I needed to work on the book, come hell or high water, and it really was like work, an actual job. I treated it as such, and demanded the same respect from people around me. The closer I got to a finished manuscript, the more excitement built in my house, and believe me, after the year hubby and I had endured, we needed that excitement. When I finally typed that last period on that last page of the first draft, the sense of relief (that it was done) and accomplishment were enough to make me giddy.
Looking back now, it is a good thing that I lost my job. Hubby and I have had to face some trials because of it, but it has been well worth the loss, and in so many ways. I learned to live on a budget again, which is not a bad thing, learned how to change my diet (thanks to yet another life-altering crisis we went through), and I wrote a book. If x hadn't happened, 'x' being the job loss, then y and z would not have, either. Y and Z turned out to be good things. Additionally, there were plenty of bad things other than the job loss that occurred, but all the bad had to happen in order for all the good to happen.
Things aren't always what they seem, and sometimes blessings come in disguises. Who would think losing a job would be a blessing?
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