#but even though I'm making at LEAST one payment every two weeks (as per my paydate)

[novoplata]

Older, wiser, better.

In my 20s, I used to read all these women's magazine listicles (10 Things to Achieve Before Turning 30, etc.) and tried my best to live by them. When I finally hit 30, I realised that it's impossible to even attempt to live by stupid to-do lists written by first-world-country columnists who knew nothing about our gigantic potholes and still lack of basic amenities.

Though I no longer think it was realistic to tick the Bahamas off my list before 30, one sensible piece of advice that stuck with me was how much I should have saved up by 30. According to a financial blog I followed, by age 30, one should save up at least the equivalent of their annual salary. This means that if you earn $3000 per month, then you should have $36000 saved up already.

It hit me like a tonne of bricks. There I was, aged 30, living paycheque to paycheque and barely meeting the minimum payment of my credit card bill. I had less than $700 in my savings and I decided then that my bad finance habit would need to change if I wanted things to change for the better.

Today, six months shy of turning 40, I'm proud to say that I've cleaned up pretty well financially. I probably won't be retiring anytime soon, but if I ever get let go from my job under unusual circumstances, at least I know I won't be crawling back into my dad's house.

Your body is a temple

My next mission is to clean up my eating habits and make my diet fully or 80% clean. I stopped tracking my weight and logging my calorie intake last year, after two years of carefully counting calories since June 2020. It was simply dieting fatigue on my part and I was ready to try out intuitive eating.

Unfortunately, intuitive eating didn't work so well for me. If anything, I'd managed to gain 2.5 kilos since the last time I weighed myself. Last week, I stepped on the scale at 66.1 kilos with 25.5% body fat. My blood pressure also recorded an elevated reading. I decided then that I need to be accountable for my health and started logging my food and weighing myself again. So far, I've lost 1.1 lbs in a week.

I don't have any target end weight to hit this time. I just want to continue eating better, minimising deep-fried, sweet and fatty foods, and increasing my fibre intake.

Overall, I'd only like to focus on changing the food preparation instead of the food itself. I was raised on the deep-fryer, so this habit is the toughest to change. But slowly, I'm hoping to change this, motivated only by the fear of having a stroke!

Here's to logging food on MyFitnessPal again and weighing myself every morning! At the end of the day, if you want anything to change, there has to be accountability involved.

#life #money #finances #diet

[spyderbones]

as someone who's worked both Reception and Customer Service jobs before I have so much empathy for people in those positions, so when I first read a post saying Collections Agents are garbage I thought it was way too harsh...... nah, now that I've been dealing with one for months, I can indeed confirm, they are Garbage

#down payment #personal #indian affairs messed up my funding for my last year of uni #so long story short I owe... many dollars #but even though I'm making at LEAST one payment every two weeks (as per my paydate) #and the payment is usually over 100 dollars despite me working part time at minimum wage #he emails me regularly to harass me into making more payments #AND #the first time we spoke on the phone back when my file was first sent to collections #he spent five minutes trying to drill me to borrow a few thousand dollars from friends/family to make a #fuck you and the horse you rode in on richard

[kingofthewilderwest]

Heyo, Haddock! I'm a linguistics student, fluent in French, and I'm studying German. I'm looking into freelance translating as a job, but so far it's pretty overwhelming - do you have any suggestions or tips on how to get a jump on that? How do you find work as a freelance linguist?

Hey there, linguist! That’s really cool, and I wish you the best as you start exploring freelance translation as possible work.

Admittedly I’ve never done translation as a job. I briefly considered it once, but never applied to any jobs there. I subsist 100% off linguistics commission work, but it’s all in theoretical linguistics, mainly along the semantics-pragmatics interface (just finished a fun project related to phonology-morphology shenanigans though). I implement theoretical linguistics knowledge by annotating large corpora of data (usually a database of many sentences) with pertinent linguistics information. At times I help modify an annotation system to be better, too. I then send my annotated data to another team, where they do computational work to develop language-related technology: for instance, using semantic information to improve a computer’s algorithm for returning relevant search results, or helping an AI interact better with humans in back-and-forth conversation. There’s limitations to how much I can explain because of nondisclosure contractual agreements. However, I can say I like to joke with my friends that, when the sentient robot revolution happens, you technically could pin part of the blame on me. I don’t do any computation stuff teaching computers to be smart, but I do feed theoretical information to a computational team.

So…. all that said! I’m happy to talk about things I’ve learned to make my freelance life sustainable. Hopefully that can help you find a groove for your own freelance journey! However, I’ve seen that translation jobs tend to run differently than what I do. You will certainly have different experiences than I do, because the translation world has is own quirks and system. But maybe some of this is applicable, and I wish you the absolute best with sorting out stuff that feels overwhelming now.

What makes my freelancing work work is that I’m re-employed by the same people and companies consistently. I’ve been doing annotation linguistics work on several projects for my alma mater university since 2012. In the public sector, there’s one company in particular I have consistent interactions with. For that one, hiring directors have my resume on file in the company’s database of possible contractors. Those hiring directors and project managers who’ve worked with me in the past tend to come back and email me with new opportunities later. What started as me tossing out a bunch of resumes and applications has turned around; now I’m at the point that I almost never look for a new contract, but get emails asking me if I’m available for a new gig. Free new job offer in the inbox! There have been times I’ve had to turn some down, too! Two to three contracts going on at the same time is more than enough volume to handle, and any more than that is ridiculous and unsustainable. I tend to prioritize the longest-running projects, while picking up a few smaller tasks from new project managers to build connections for future networking purposes.

Actually, one of the main companies I work contracts with, Appen, also hires translators for basically EVERY language internationally - so you could check them out if you’d like! You could be qualified to do some gigs with them! Once you submit an application for one job, your information is on store for the company to use for future gigs. However, an idle resume probably isn’t going to do much over time. I recommend re-submitting your application for new jobs - it shows volition, availability, and helps your name get pulled to their attention. I’ll admit that my first few applications didn’t catch any fish; it wasn’t until I name-dropped (one of the university professors I worked for) that I ended up receiving responses from the hiring managers and project leads.

If you do end up doing contract work in a system like Appen’s, I encourage you to be very careful. With freelance linguistics or translations, there’s many gigs that underpay workers or have paying practices that might not secure semi-stable income. You and I don’t live in the same country, so this isn’t going to be the same, but there’s healthcare and tax stuff I have to keep an eye on, too. Honestly, one of the reasons I decided not to pursue the possibility of remote work translating… was that many available translation jobs offered in my area… made me raise my eyebrows. Some sketchy stuff is out there. Sure. Some was GREAT work. Full-time salaried position working as a civilian in a military base? Those looked like solid gigs. Other common translation work is remote translating through a translation-oriented company, where you’d have consistent work and could be a freelancer, not in short-term projects like I get, but being an ongoing member translator. But some translation companies I saw lots of negative reviews for regarding payment practices and how they treated employees as replaceable; seems like you had to be a project manager overseeing translation quality to have a good gig (I did have one old linguistics classmate get that position). I also always was nervous about the idea that some translation companies seemed to pay you per word for what documents you translated (what if you only got short messages that month? maybe workflow is steady(?), but that sounded nerve-wracking to me on the outsider’s perspective - same type of scary as people in sales being paid based on how much they sell). The work I do is paid per hour - not salaried - but at least “per hour” can be more stable and flexible with what you do. 

So yeah. I don’t know if this makes your job searching more or less overwhelming, but be careful. Sometimes job-wise in life we have to start with “anything,” but “anything” won’t get good money or mental rest, and there’s times to say “no” to “anything”. There is fair work too, though.

Note that some of my comments on the translation field maaaay be inaccurate, given as it’s been a while since I’ve looked at that, and some of my observations will be based upon where I live versus you. I don’t want to feed unintentionally bad information, so everything I say on the field should be taken with a good grain of salt.

I haven’t had problems with my work, in part because I’ve figured out the payment bargain game. Every time a new gig asks what I’d like to be paid, I increase the price amount slightly. They usually agree. I feel like, as far as hourly contract work is concerned, I’m not being paid jack shit or being taken advantage of so much, and I am more than happy to spend my work week in my pajamas at home listening to metal music in the background, choosing my hours - even if it’s freaking 2 AM. Salaried positions pay more of course, and would be “fairer” considering my education level, but I’m still well over minimum wage. I’ll take it. Once I get mental health issues worked out (they’re capping my ability to work the number of hours a week I need), I’ll be making decent yearly income. There’s the constant terror of not getting new gigs, though, which comes with companies making me only a part-time contractor… but in your translation, that shouldn’t be any issue. There’s going to be freelance translation you can do within one translation company and chill there as long as you like. You won’t have to keep reapplying to new gigs if you settle in with some translation company.

One thing I suspect you might have to do, though, especially to get decent gigs, is get translation certification. I haven’t looked into it, though I remember seeing the word floated around. Maybe you know this already though. XD You would have looked more into the field than me!

I’m wishing you the very best with starting a freelance translation journey, and you rock for being a linguist. I wish I could have been more helpful! I’d be interested to hear any experiences you have or end up having, if you ever want to share! Languages for the win!

#canadarama #long hair #linguistics #non-dragons #my life #translation #sorry that I don't know more! #I.... hope this was clear #I'm always happy to talk back and forth #and explain things more #hope you end up finding something cool #:)