Hello my dear Hive friends.

I vowed not to write posts complaining all the time, and yet, here I am, for another round.
Life has been strange and a little bit shitty in my little Mexican world these past few weeks.
Rough but still hopeful, if you know what I mean. You probably don't (I know, I can be vague like that) so I'll have to dive into it with you to explain.

This past 1.5 year I've been doing three things work wise. I worked for two different AI companies.
Two of the largest ones, with the largest clients. The main players so to speak.
And it's been good to me all that time. Until it wasn't...
Recently, two months ago, I managed to land a client to do translation work for, which I'm very happy about because it's a great company, the owner is fair and honest, and likes to support women in business. Amazing! But unfortunately, there isn't enough work to write home about. However, I'm glad that I have it, because it fills a few gaps. Gaps that have now gotten much bigger.

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So a couple of weeks ago, I was actually getting ready to book our flights to Europe.
The plan was that we'd land in Germany around the 8th of this month, and that my eldest daughter would pick up two of the kiddos there to bring them to the Netherlands with her.
My youngest sprout was going to join me at Hivefest.
We were then going to travel around the Eastern European regions for a bit, and slowly make our way to the Netherlands, to spend some time with my sister, and my eldest daughter.

All of it came to an abrupt halt the very next day. It's a good thing that I didn't book anything the day before, and that a little voice in my head told me to wait.
Because that day, I was logging into my account with one of the companies and was met with a white screen. Not good! They locked me out of my account, and the only message was that my account had been closed. No explanation, nothing. I never did anything wrong. I worked my butt off for that company, sometimes 60 hours or more in one week, whenever there was a lot of work.
I always made sure to log the hours I worked exactly as they were, and clocked them exactly by the minute. If anything, I would deduct time, rather than add any.
The only explanation I have is that I went above a certain amount, and that this would mean that I would be seen as an employee, rather than a freelancer, and they don't want that.
A negative side effect of my closed account was that they kept almost $1000...
There's no way for me to retrieve this, because I'd have to be able to log into my account...
Everyone I speak to tells me they legally can't do this, but they do this anyway. It's an American corporation, and they can pretty much do whatever the hell they want. There's really not much to do about it. You're not even a person in their eyes.

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So there went my plans...
After a little bit of discussing things with the kids, my daughter suggested I'd go alone. And then only for the week. Since I still had the other job with the other AI company, this was a good possibility. I'd probably make it. Until this company did a similar thing about two weeks ago...
I logged into my account, and saw a message telling me I was removed from the project and that I could appeal. It's not easy to appeal something if you don't know what the cause of the removal is.
I appealed it anyway, and they sent me a message telling me that I was removed for suspicion of one of three reasons...
The first was letting the times run while not working. Well, this never happened. Even if I have to use the bathroom, I turn mine off. Furthermore, my team leader told me a few weeks ago to work slower, because I was going to fast...So letting the timer run too long wasn't it.
The second one was that I could have been browsing other websites while working. This is true. Because we have to research whatever the AI comes back with for truthfulness, we have to browse other websites...How else will we do the work?
And number three was the craziest one. I could have been working on more than one device...
Well, the thing is, I've accidentally logged onto the worker's platform a second time before, and was immediately logged out of the first one. So even if I wanted to, I could never log into the system twice with two different devices...Also, how would this benefit me? I'd still be working the same hours!
So it was bullshit. These companies really suck sometimes. Also, when you fire someone, or close their account, you know the EXACT reason and not a 3 multiple choice option. Bullshit.

Anyway. My appeal went nowhere because they were not going to reinstall me. Period. Even though their reasoning makes no sense.

Luckily, I had my team leader in my corner, who backed me up and filed a complaint on my behalf. Yesterday I also decided to send them another appeal, because there was something else not quite right: In the message it said that I had several warnings. I never had any warnings!
So in this appeal, I told them that I wanted to receive proof from them that they sent me those warnings...Just a few hours ago I received a message that they reinstated my account.😉 I guess my team lead's complaint, and my second appeal worked.
Not that it's any good for my Hivefest plans, because I'll never be able to work enough before the pay cut-off, and even if so, I wouldn't get paid till next week Wednesday.

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Yesterday my translation client sent me a new file to work on, and offered to pay me an advance.
The advance would get me half-way there...
I'd have to sleep on someone's floor, but that's a minor hurdle.
So there. That's my Road to Hivefest this year. Not quite there yet and only a few days to go.
But I won't give up, until it's the 10th and I'm still not there...
To Be continued...

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On another note...

The first incident had me down and slightly depressed for weeks. I cried my eyes out for a day or so. Going from almost booking to worrying about what to do next, isn't fun. But I still had the other job, until I didn't. But when I was removed from that one as well, I decided to play my cards differently. Worrying is wasted energy. So instead, I spent a little bit of the last bit of money I had on a hosting package, and created my own website. Travel related. The hosting package lets me host 100 websites, if I wanted to. 100 is a bit much, but I already have two more in mind.
The travel website is almost done now, and I have a few ideas for it.
I figured, I might as well try to make the best out of a bad situation. This way, once I start generating an income with it, I won't have to worry about companies dealing me bad cards.
F%#^&'em. I started signing up for all the good travel related companies that offer affiliate options. And then I thought I'd approach some companies that don't offer these, and ask them if they'd be willing to in return for an article on my website. Yesterday I received an email back from one of those companies. They'd love to work with me! I'm overjoyed to hear this news and it motivates me to get similar deals. If I know to do one thing, it's travel. Why on earth didn't I think of this sooner? LOL.
Also to be continued...
(Once my website is filled up a little more, I'll let you have a look...)

I might go into my 'dark' zone sometimes, and disappear for a while. The people close to me know this like no other...(I haven't left the house in months...only if I really needed to). But I always pick myself back up and keep going, no matter what. I am not a giver-upper...And the people here that know me, know that. To brighter days!

Images created in Leonardo.ai, with some help from me