2020 to 2022 – Two years of new jobs, studying, and life lessons

To put two years of my life into a single blog post will be tough, but I want to share everything I had to deal with while studying, so I will try.

It all started when I came back from Australia in March 2020. With the pandemic starting, all the plans I had were thrown over board. As I temporarily lost my job, I was thinking I could study instead, so I signed up to do my masters degree in retail management. Classes started at the end of September. By then, I already had a job that I quit and found a new one once more as a manager in retail. Autumn was also the time when I finally found an apartment to buy and moved in in October. My new lifestyle turned out to be busy: My job was a one-hour drive one way, and I worked full-time plus had to take my study classes twice a week for 12 hours per week altogether. So on Mondays for example I had to wake up very early, leave my apartment at 6am to start work at 7 am, then leave work at 4 pm to be at my class at 6 pm and still have a little time to eat something. My class went on till 10 pm so I came home at 10:30 pm, only to wake up at 7 am again the next morning to leave for work at 7:30. Additionally, I also had to study for exams in my free time.

By the beginning of 2021, the work for my master thesis started in addition to everything else. I had no time for my friends or family, not to mention any kind of fun. I was clearly overworked and luckily recognized the signs before it was too late. I resigned from my full-time job in May 2021. That gave me the break I needed to have some time to do research for my master thesis during the summer. I also started babysitting two hours per week to have some extra money in addition to my unemployment compensation. By autumn, I started a second job for 8 hours per week in childcare, and due to special circumstances, I had to move back to my old apartment in which I lived before my move to Australia. So I started looking for someone to rent the apartment I bought and found a reliable guy. I also did a two-months course for unemployed women, in which I got to know a lot of different professions because I didn’t want to work in retail anymore. In January 2022, the busiest time of my master thesis started. I had to hand it in by May. I also started working 30 hours per week in an office in my hometown in addition to the babysitting and childcare job. Don’t ask me why I once more put all those things on my plate. Basically, I was as busy as in the year before.

In February, I got the news from my tenant that he wanted to move out due to personal circumstances. The timing couldn’t have been worse, but what else was there to do for me than looking for a new tenant. I found a new one in March. He moved in in April, but it turned out that he was a fraud and never paid rent. So besides my three jobs and finishing my master thesis, I had to deal with that shit too. I still had the money of the bond (without it, I wouldn’t have let him move in), and it was worth about three months’ rent, so I couldn’t worry about him at that moment. Instead, I focused on finishing my thesis and studying for the final exams.

After I finished my thesis and the exams in May, I had time to deal with that asshole of tenant, who repeatedly refused to move out. It took a few weeks in which I tried a lot of stuff. I asked a lawyer for advice and went to talk to him with the police accompanying me. But the law wasn’t helpful. Though it was on my side, it would have taken months or even a whole year to get him out, something I couldn’t afford financially. So I changed the locks when he wasn’t home and was finally able to kick him out by the end of May. But I still struggled to find a new tenant, and the fraud guy left all his shit in the apartment and never picked it up, so altogether, it was just a lot to handle. I had to clean it all out and pay the loan and bills for an empty apartment. I was so sick of all that mess that I started to look for buyers to sell the apartment, which took me about 6 months. But then, finally, by the end of 2022, I got rid of it.

Additionally, in the summer of 2022, I tore my meniscus. I also had to start a marketing and social media course by the end of May because of the contract with the company I worked for. I had to have knee surgery, which was a happy coincidence because it gave me an excuse to terminate the contract with the company early as I really didn’t like the bosses at my office job. It also gave me a break from my other two jobs, and I was still able to finish the marketing and social media course by the end of June due to doing the classes online. My knee surgery was on the 4th of July, and it took me six weeks to recover. By the end of August, I went into physical rehab for another three weeks because they also fixed my ACL, which I tore in 2019.

I applied for new jobs during my sick leave and found a remote job as an office and social media manager 30 hours per week. I started in October and quit my babysitting job at the same time. On the 31st of October, I tore my meniscus again and had surgery once more a week later. This time, it took only a few days to recover because it was “only” my meniscus and not my ACL. I also resigned from my childcare job by the end of November because of the tax situation when working two jobs. You’re not gonna believe this but though I really liked the new remote job, in December it turned out that my new boss did not have enough money to pay me so I had to find a new job once more.

Finally, I found a great company and started my new job as a copywriter in February of 2023. I’m happy how it all turned out, and though I still haven’t received all the salary from my old boss, I know I’ll get it eventually as the court is already involved.

The two years from 2020 to 2022 taught me a few important life lessons:

• People can appear super nice and lie into your face without any guilt or shame (the fraud tenant).
• My free time is more important to me than any job, which is why I never want to work full-time again.
• And finally the most important lesson. My mental health is more important than any money or job.