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2004, Spring: Decision made to take a hiatus (perhaps permanent) from school and discontinue working for the City of Riverside. Instead I made the decision to work for a small, local construction company and make my way in the world via the booming housing market
2004, Fall: Decision made that while construction is fun, it isn't paying very well and the employer is disinclined to provide the educational opportunities that on-the-job training provides unless the company's needs dictate otherwise; consequently, I move on with my life and begin telemarketing for a small, local health insurance brokerage.
2004-5, Winter: I get my CA Life Agent license, which allows me to sell health and life insurance in the state of California. Site is updated in ancitipation of perhaps using it to this end.
2006, Spring: Let me be the first to tell you that selling insurance that is not mandated by law (like, for example, car insurance, worker's comp, etc.) is difficult. Prospective clients, both employers and individuals, treat you with suspicion, which to a certain extent is understandable, unless you've (A) spent a whole hell of a lot of money on their business or (B) you've already established a need and they are just being obtuse. I got my license with the idea that I was going to help people, whether that come in the form of advising employers and individuals, acting as a patient advocate against the insurance carriers and health providers, provide the risk management that insurance offers to prevent financial collaspe in the event of a catastrophe, and do all of that at a lower cost. You can only get so many suspicious stares when you walk through the door, so much rude behavior on the phone, and so many broken appointments. Decision is made that if people get into accident or acquire an illness and as a result end up with financial hardship, and they happened to be one of the people exhibiting the aforementioned reprehensible behavior, it's their own fault and I refuse to feel sorry for them, especially if they refused any insurance in the first place. It's their fault for a lack of risk management. They were warned. Additionally, any businesses that I did contribute to who failed to return the favor get the same treatment. If your time and money isn't good enough for me, then I guess the same goes for you. Besides, it's cheaper to get alcohol at a store and skip dealing with your unpleasant clientele.
So, what am I going to do? Well for starters, I'm going to hold on to my license. It's good for almost another year, and will be useful if the odd chance occurs where I'm able to provide a referral to someone and get a piece of that action. As for my future? I had two choices:
1. Commute a total of four hours per day to test games at Blizzard in Irvine.
2. Go back to school.
As you might imagine, I chose the latter option. With what has happened with Interplay and other gaming companies, there is simply no future in a job testing games. If the company collaspes, I'm screwed. If the company downsizes or gets bought out, I'm potentially screwed. Plus the four hour commute. So I am back in school, hopefully with better performance this time around. After two years, I should be graduated with a degree that will ensure my financial stability, barring the collaspe of western civilization.
So, what does this mean for bluesoulsearcher.com, you ask. It means a rededication of the site to what I ultimately hope to do for a living: write. To that purpose I intend to engage in the following:
I) Write reviews on things that are reviewable. In my case, books, movies, tv series (Deadwood is coming up again soon), games, microbrews, wines, and restaurants. If you know me, the games will be probably be older, as my personal rule is to never purchase a game over $20. The other stuff will come when I have the money to pay for them or I feel like experiencing them.
II) Blog things that in my mind are bloggable. Yes, this merely adds me to a cast of millions, but that doesn't really matter because if you don't care, you won't read it, and if you do, you will.
III) Publish my material that has no hope of being published in the forseeable future. Don't think of it as sloppy seconds, since technically you aren't going to read it anywhere else but here.
So, thanks for reading, and stay tuned. If you want to see what the site looked like in olden day, go to Oldtown.
Please direct all comments to my email or my guestbook. If you are signing my guestbook, keep in mind that all guestbook entries are submitted to me prior to being posted publically. This means that if you failed to keep it sufficiently clean (please view guestbook for what that means) or you thought you would try and get some free advertising in on my site, your entry will be deleted. If you are the latter, whatever you or your bot enters will be seen only by me, then prompty deleted. You are not going to spam my viewers, however few they may be. As for me, I will not be visiting your crappy site or buying your crappier products, so do us both a favor and keep on moving. If you are trying to buy ad space to advertise your excellent site and/or useful products, contact me and we'll work something out, provided you aren't in the adult entertainment or extremism industries, as defined by me. I am also willing to linkshare with the aforementioned exceptions. - Bluesoulsearcher
