Day 6: From the Yard Sale to the ER
Yard Sale and the ER
So….After 2 days at a garage sale we netted $202.50. I left to take the rest of the items to the nearest charity and when I got back, my wife had taken the boys home because my youngest hurt his foot. He had been standing next to a mini-trampoline and another boy was jumping and it lifted enough for him to put his foot under and BAM!.
I called my university health insurance, but it expired last week and we were still waiting to find out if the boys qualified for Medicaid. His foot started turning multiple colors so we called the urgent care and asked for the cash price. $200. + $100 X-Ray.
Welp. Easy come. Easy go.
Anyway, after the X-ray we found he had a small fracture on his 5th metatarsal. So for the next 3 weeks he will be in a boot, but at least he won’t be in a cast.
Job Search
I created an Airtable database to help categorize my search. If you don’t have much experience with this, it is an amazing program that beats out excel in many functional ways. Below is an overview screenshot.

So I applied for 5 positions this past week in between taking the boys to school, cleaning the house, making dinner, and studying for more than 8 hours on SQL databases, which I thought would be harder. The formatting seemed way easier than some of the Excel formula’s I created.
What takes the longest is the cover letter, finding the correct person to address it to, and going back and forth between their mission statement and beliefs and knowing if my letter falls in line with their belief.
Only 1 of the positions I applied for is within 50 miles of Tyler. The others are all in Dallas, which means I would be needing to stay with my parents or drive 2 hours one way. Which, I would do if it meant making enough for my wife to not have to work.
It is a bit difficult to see only 5–10 positions outside of retail or in my scope of work in 2 weeks in the Tyler area and over 150 positions in 24 hours within the scope of where I want to find myself. We love it here in Tyler and I will do everything I can and must if it means that my family won’t have to move.
Miscellaneous
I spent the morning cleaning and driving my boys to Dallas for them to spend the weekend with their grandparents while my wife and I spend time together in Tyler. She is really sick so we have been watching The Guernsey Literary Society.
I am finding that life moves on and if you are so concentrated on how it isn’t going your way then you get really anxious and overwhelmed and that is when you start craving things to escape. But. I have also found that planning and completing items along with taking time to exercise greatly reduces that anxiety.
So for those like me looking for work, I would just take it a day at a time. That application you just finished, probably won’t be looked at today or even tomorrow, so don’t worry. Do what you can and then turn off the job search the same way you would leave work.
Sincerely,
Justin Tuley
