Side Jobs

 I got a comment yesterday asking what my side jobs were all about. Well, I heard about one or two of these apps about 7 years ago on a subreddit called beer money. Then I heard about the rest as time went on. I did them as side jobd for a while, then when the pandemic hit, I did them as my main source of income because they paid so well. Keep in mind that they paid extraordinarily well during the pandemic, because no one wanted to go in and out of several stores. Then starting in 2022, the pay started decreasing steadily and by the end of 2022, I got a “real job”  which is fine, because that real job is where I met my husband. 

There used to be this mutual understanding among people in the forums for these, that we wouldn't be referring our friends and family, because that would mean fewer projects for us. I don't think that matters anymore in 2026. No one really depends on these anymore. The good paying gigs do come around every so often, but it's rare. 

The apps are Field Agent, Murchandiser (formerly EasyShift), Ivueit, Observa, GigWalk, and Premise. Premise has literally nothing anymore. Field Agent will only pay $2-$3, but I keep it for the free meals and free items +$3. Observe is average. Ivueit is for real estate investors and mainly wants pictures of landscaping. Merchandiser is the most intense. Merchandiser used to be EasyShift which paid you to go into stores and take pictures of certain aisles and displays. Field agent does the same thing. Like I said in the last post, though, you gotta keep it discreet. Some store managers and employees get nervous if they see someone taking pictures and might even ask you to leave. On Merchandiser, you might see very high paying liquor display audits. These are harder to do incognito, because liquor stores are smaller with more attentive staff, and they 100% will tell you not to take pictures. However, it's easier to be discreet at Specs. Specs is larger with less attentive employees. I generally do non liquor display jobs and liquor only if it's a specs location. 

Also on Merchandiser and Observa are jobs where you do actually go speak to a manager and have to ask about back stock on a certain item and check their handhelds. Also on Merchandiser, there are actual merchandising jobs where you build displays. There is a lot on there from frito lay. My husband asked yesterday why don't the frito lay reps do those. I don't know, but my guess is because they don't like going to family dollar or dollar general. 

Between March of 2020 and December of 2021, I did these in nine states: All over Texas of course, because that's where I live. Also Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Southern Illinois and a little bit in Memphis. Before I met my husband, I was on again off again with an old high school friend in Arizona who was a single dad of two. I went to see them often, trying tovaee how much I could make on the way there and back. Another time, I needed my birth certificate and literally did these all the way to Illinois where I was born, because they were not shipping it. In July of 2020, I did very high paying coca cola beverage audits all over Arkansas. I made a killing. I also went through Arkansas on the way to Illinois. Another time, I just did my own little personal tour of Oklahoma while doing these. Same with Louisiana. Other times, I would go out to do some nearby and keep taking the next one and the next one and the next one, only to have a super long drive home. My mother yelled at me often to plan my routes better. I would do that, and then when I got to my farthest point, they'd send me a route offer for even further that I couldn't refuse. 

My favorite memory is calling her and her sounding anxious asking “Where are you?” I said, “Missouri.”  she thought I meant the Houston suburb of Missouri City only 25 miles from her house. I had to admit “No. No I'm in the state. Of Missouri.”  

This whole experience was a big lesson in finding myself and the beginning of my healing from severe panic attacks that started happening when I finished college in 2014. Now that my husband is on them, he wants to do more of the ones where you have to speak to a manager, because he's used to doing that with the inventory service. It's only a side hustle now, but comes in handy often. 

Trainer

A few days ago, my husband Kevin also signed up for the merchandiser app. Today I took him to a kroger where he did a toilet paper and paper towel audit for $25.17. This is technically a mystery shop and the employees aren't supposed to know what we're doing. I have been doing these jobs since 2018, so I know how to look discreet. My husband, however, was standing in the aisle looking like this: 

 

I stood to his side with a cart to block the pharmacy’s view of him. He let me take the first few pictures to see how I do it discreetly. Then he finished the job himself. He only had to redo one picture due to the top of the aisle being cut off. He said I am a good trainer.  I know I am!!! I used to train new people when I worked at the childrens museum. 

The Perfect April Fools Joke

 The inventory service tends to have busy and slow spurts. Kevin has been pretty busy lately, and today is his first of five days off. All day yesterday, he kept anticipating the bosses to let him know about something for the next few days, but by bedtime, the answer was still nope. Then at 3:00 am, we were both up with the cats causing ruckus. I told him that the manager called last night, and that he does have to work today. His face was immediately 😨.  He totally believed me. Then I said, “April Fools!”    He burst out laughing. He is *really* looking forward to five days off. 

As for me, I have two days off and then doing split shifts Friday through Monday. I'm not letting that change. If she texts me with some emergency, I'm just leaving it unread. If I don't click on the text, she wont get a read receipt. Then I can say I was asleep. I really need these couple of days off. 

The bedridden client I'm caring for now wondered where I was all last weekend because I was working with the temporary clients. She favors me, and that's good. But, I'm trying not to get too attached to her, because I don't think she has much time. She's not on hospice, but it seems like she will be soon. 

Yesterday, she was crying to me, because she was in the hospital when her husband died at home, and she wasn't there to hold him and tell him she loved him. That almost broke me, because I am absolutely dreading losing my husband. He's so much older than me that it's more likely. I reassured her that he did know she loved him. And that I was sorry. Then she started bitching about gas prices, but she doesn't go anywhere. So that was better. 

Then, she got a Facebook message from a scammer that had copied the profile and likeness of her granddaughter, asking her for $500 to fix her car. My client was asking me what “Zelle” was, and I was sus immediately. I despise helping elderly people with stuff on phones. And the messages from her granddaughter kept coming super impatiently. “Have u sent it yet?”  “I really need it grandma, can you hurry?” and so on. I asked if this was like her. She said no. I said it sounded like a scam. She said it was her granddaughter’s Facebook profile. I looked at the profile and the thread and her friends list. And it was clearly a scammer. 

Even so, she doesn't know how to use zelle or pay pal anyway and I wasn't about to show her. I pretended I didn't know either. 

She didn't completely understand and still thinks her granddaughter needs money. I'm exhausted. She wasn't scammed, so that's good, and maybe eventually her granddaughter will get $500 out of this. 

Exercise is Amazing

I’ve been pushing myself more than usual to exercise. This is mainly because the weight loss pill I was prescribed gives me a burst of energy lasting about 6-7 hours every morning. Unfortunately, a crash of tiredness then follows, but a caffeinated drink reverses that. The burst of energy feels nice, and the point is to use it to exercise. 

I’ve also usually described my anxiety as a certain feeling in my arms, legs, upper chest, and upper back. The feeling itself is not anxiety, but causes anxiety, I think. The feeling makes it super difficult to initiate movement. I have to really force myself to get out of a chair or out of the car, and so on. It makes me feel suspended, like my arms and legs are being held back. I think this has contributed to weight gain for me. This happened after I finished college. This muscle feeling happened, and the extreme difficulty in initiating movement caused gradual weight gain. Also when you have anxiety, everything is an emergency, and I personally kind of eat like it’s an emergency. If that makes me sound “fat phobic,” then please try to understand about anxiety and the fight, flight or freeze responses. 

Ever since I started taking phentermine, I have not had this constant emergency feeling surrounding food. I can eat just enough and be good for several hours, not even feeling hungry or anticipating what I should eat next.

Before the phentermine, I was only walking about 1,000-3,000 steps daily, even though my goal is 10,000. Last week, I hit my goal of 10,000 five out of the seven days. This week, I hit it all three days in a row now. 

Trust me, I am SORE AS HELL.  But the creepy Crawley muscle feeling that I've had since finishing college actually is cured by that soreness. It's hard to explain. The soreness is preferable. 

This morning, I went to the gym at 5:00 am and did 5500 steps on the treadmill. Then I went to the park at 7:00 am and did about 3,000 more as well as got on this machine. You push those with your arms, and it works your upper arms and upper abdomen. I completed my 10,000 steps goal by doing some side jobs (taking pictures in stores) and parking far away from the doors. I think this is a great way to heal the stuff I've been through the last 12 years. I definitely have “the high”  And the sore. 

 

10 Unfinished Projects

 I feel like the poster child for late diagnosed ADHD right now, because I feel like I’ve started ten things and haven’t finished any of them. 

The book I’m writing called The Child Advocate. I did write out a few scenes in the spiral notebook I talked about earlier. That thing is too heavy to work on every day. Every day would be ideal, though. 

All the reading and research on anti-ABA online, which now includes  This culmination

The two books I’m reading on the same subject.  The book by the author “Julie Roberts” who I can’t find info on because of her similar name to Julia Roberts is all full of scientific studies. I simply can’t remember much of what I learned in methods in research class at University of Houston.  I’d need a brief refresher, probably something on YouTube.  I texted my daughter asking her when she takes it at TXST.  She doesn’t know.  Probably in her junior year, as it’s a 300 level class. 

Working as a caregiver and trying to set at least some boundaries with musical schedule boss (gift card boss).  She does sort of a professional version of love bombing.  It’s not real love bombing, it’s work appropriate.  She says I’m amazing, I’m a rockstar, I’m this and that  and maybe I am 🤷🏻‍♀️.  I’m also fundamentally exhausted, and musical schedules affects my mental health.  

I am trying to do more side jobs on the merchandiser and field agent apps, and now my husband wants to try them.  We are planning to go do some together, but haven’t gotten a chance.  This weekend, the field agent app had a lot of freebies.  I got two free subway sandwiches plus $3 each, free chipotle (I got vegetarian tacos) plus I think $3 or $5, and another free stick of deodorant plus $5.  We will never run out of deodorant at this rate.

Writing my own recipe cards based on stuff I find in cookbooks that I like and want to try. 

I bought an old art history textbook from half price books and am trying to cut out pictures of art and make collages with decoupage.  I worked a little on a Byzantine inspired one for my mom for Mother’s Day.

Reading the handful of books I have on writing. 

Purpose nigh to walk 10,000 steps daily  

The fun I’m having with ChatGPT helping me come up with elements to the other book in my head- the one with the couple based on me and my first love, Matthew. I’m actually creating story lines for all seven kids based on the kids of some influencers I semi-follow. 

Thinking of Matt brought a memory to mind. When we first started dating, we worked together at a supermarket. He used to say he wanted to work his way up with that and eventually become a store manager. This was very much discouraged. He was basically yelled at that there was no working his way up in the supermarket business and that it was a dead end job to even be a store manager. He was pressured to go to college and get a degree instead.  We all were. Well, about a year ago, my inventory coworker, who used to be a grocery store manager told me that she was making $120-$130,000 a year. I was floored. She was making that in the past, not just now days. When I expressed my disbelief, her husband told me that store managers actually do make that much. What?  I literally said, “Why then, when you are a kid working in a store, they tell you that working your way up there is a dead end?  They both said, “I don’t know.” And “It’s not a dead end.” 

One more thing to add to the list of “things they were wrong about.”  RIP Matt

AI Family Portraits

It dawned on me today that there would be no way possible to get my three cats posing together in a nice grassy meadow for a family portrait. So I had ChatGPT do it. It came out perfect, except for the fact that Alex has less white on his paws. He wears ankle socks, not crews. 

Then I thought- you know what else would be impossible?  Getting my family together to pose for a family portrait. It’s not just because we all live in different cities and states, it’s also because many of us/them don’t even speak to each other. I tried to get ChatGPT to do one family portrait of me with my paternal first cousins, and one with me and my maternal first cousins. 

This one is what came up when I entered pictures of me and my cousins on my father’s side. That’s supposed to be me on the far left. My only female cousin on that side has aged significantly since looking like this, and she looks exactly like our mutual grandmother now.  The four men all look spot on. 

My mother’s side was a little more complicated, because there were 16 of us.  I’m supposed to be the one in the black shirt in the front row. It looks nothing like me. This was way more complicated to make, because I didn’t have pictures of everyone. For the ones I didn’t have pictures of, I gave ChatGPT pictures of their siblings that they resembled most. That’s why there are a couple in here that look like twins. In my opinion, only half of the people here look like the actual people, but this one was just hard to do. Maybe when I have the mental energy and headspace to do so, I’ll submit more changes to ChatGPT to get a more realistic family portrait. 

I didn’t like being an only child, and I gravitated to my 19 cousins as much as possible. Yes there are 20 total, but one was an adoptee that we didn’t find out about until about 2017.  Two have passed away, two have gone no contact with everyone (it’s not known if these two are alive or dead but I presume them alive), and there are three that won’t speak to me and are among my biggest haters now. But that’s ok. Haters are gonna hate!  

I’m not sure if the children of one’s first cousins are considered your second cousins or your first cousins once removed, but in total, I have 29 of those now. Most of those 29 are adults with their own families, and I do not have a count on how many grandchildren of my first cousins there are. (Great grandchildren of my parents siblings). On my father’s side, it’s 8.  On my mom’s side, who knows. It’s 24-25 that I know of. 

When I’m old, with grandkids and great grandkids, I hope we can take family portraits like this in real time, instead of having AI do it because we are all so distant in so many ways. In the 1980’s in Chicago, my holidays looked like this. 

If my grandparents saw these fake images with everyone hugging and smiling, they’d be proud if they thought it would be real. Realistically, they couldn’t possibly proud at the sheer number of generational curses that have been perpetrated. I’m confident that third generation, the one I don’t have a count for, will “break those curses” and do way better than we did. In fact, I believe the young people in general are already doing way better than we ever did, in most families. 

The kids are alright. 

I’m the Proudest Mom

Today my daughter Anna volunteered again with the animal sciences club at Texas State U. Then, she went to a No Kings protest and posed with a drag queen. 

I’m so proud of my kid. I never tried to live vicariously through her, and I never pushed things on her that would make her “have things I didn’t have”.  But here she is, living her best life at 18.