I worked today, on Thanksgiving of 2020. This is the first paid work I have done for...almost two years.

This is the year 2020, in the middle of a pandemic, so I am not working in the usual way. I am teaching English, online, to students around the world.

I had been searching for jobs, and was starting to get nervous. I realized I might not even know how to write a cover letter, and I was seriously considering going to a resume writing service to spice up my resume by trying to explain my diverse work experiences in a format that would make sense to people in middle-management positions. In the midst of this, a message popped up on reddit, because I had posted in an ESL teaching community. With little else to do, I responded. My job interview was via Skype, a half hour long, and I never had to produce a resume or proof of credentials.

After some nervousness about teaching online for the first time, and getting a spare headset, just in case, I had my first class offered, and I took it. Again, the ESL world, especially in the new era of teaching online, does not have a lot of formality and red tape. I was offered the class yesterday and took it today: an hour of conversation with a man in Mexico. Despite the seeming ease of this, I still had a hard time sleeping, and was rather anxious when class started.

The only thing that "went wrong", was a 2 minute long glitch where Zoom went down. It wasn't my internet, it was specifically Zoom. And for two minutes, I was facing down my doom: despite all my education and experience, if I couldn't keep a stable internet connection, I couldn't do my job, and I would be an embarrassment to my employer, etc. This is what my entire life and future hinges on in the year 2020: whether a bunch of software programs that we have all adapted in a haste manage to work kinda like we want them to work.

But I am happy. I am trying my hardest, and succeeding, even an eensie-teensie bit, in what will probably be remembered as a nightmare year.

And that is what I know, for now.

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