Where I've Been…..
A few months back I started my technician level 1 training so I can be an Extruder press technician (Extruder press essentially cleans a car axle through a process like sandblasting, stretches it to length, and checks parts for defects further down the assembly line). That meant going in an extra 4 hours earlier three days out of the week every week. Being a technician isn't easy as there's a lotto learn and once you reach level 1, you have to reach level 2 within six months after being a level 1 ( L2 involves changing out the press tooling on your own without all that much assistance as well as getting quality on top of resolving machinery faults and doing routine part checks every hour). Being a technician is my current goal as the pay raise makes my standard of living all the better. For example, and not to sound like I'm bragging, I left my last auto parts job of six years back in December 2021 at a rate of $16.50 an hour. I now make $20-$21 an hour at my current job. My last job was Mon-Fri at ten hours from 5PM to 3:30AM, and eight hours on Saturday, and was an hour-long drive down to Detroit, where I worked for a somewhat awful company with no chance to really learn any new skills.
My current job is still in the auto parts industry but is ten minutes from home with an eight-hour work schedule every day (I get one day off a week just like my last job but this is still way better) and a chance to gain a new set of skills. Compare this to my last job where I would have to pull over in a store parking lot and sleep for three hours (I was getting out at 3:30AM, I'd rather not fall asleep behind the wheel and die. Imagine doing this in negative degree weather in winter) and my current job is one hundred times better. My point is my life is much better, but if I want to keep my job, I must keep progressing and learning new skills. For my younger readers, having a job where you can learn new skills is important as being extremely skilled makes it that much harder for your boss to simply get rid of you if they don't have someone as equally skilled as you to take your place (Make them need you, not the other way around). All of this has left me with less time to work on this project, but that doesn't mean I'm fully stopping. I have some other parts of this project in the works (so I don't lose ideas) and I do appreciate all 66 fav and 90 follows of you. I know you all say take as much time as you need, but I figured you at least deserved to know why it has been taking a little longer than normal to get much done.