Personal update: Job promotion, Herbalism certification, and Medium Partner Program

I was promoted at work!

Last month, I was promoted from tech I to tech II at my job. I started a new job as a formulations technician back in September. I’m with the same company and location that I have been with since 2017, but it’s a new lab, a new role, and a new department. I worked as an animal care technician at this research lab and it was my first full-time job out of college. My job was taking care of animals that are used for medical research purposes. I had minimal involvement in the testing itself, but my primary role was keeping the animals safe, giving them food and water, changing their boxes, and monitoring their health. I genuinely enjoyed the job for several years, I had some really amazing and life-changing coworkers, but I was very burnt out after five years. I’m happy for my prior experience, and I would not change a thing, but I knew it was time for a new direction at that point.

My job as a formulations technician is super interesting! I prepare formulations in a lab that get transferred to the other lab in order to carry out medical research testing. Most of this testing is for disease treatments and vaccines, occasionally it is for the food we eat. Our site specifically has a major focus on how drugs affect pregnant women and fetuses. Without all of this research and testing, there wouldn’t be treatments or cures for diseases without understanding the longterm impact on our bodies. So, most of my day is focused on preparing these formulations. There are usually one or two preps per day; one prep can take 1-2 hours, or it can take an entire day around 8-10 hours, or anything in between. The lab has a “control room” in which all controlled articles are prepared, and then we have our own individual rooms where we work by ourselves to make the test article component.

I like this job because it allows for a lot of introversion and independence. It can still be a very social job, but much of it is me working in a small room by myself. It’s a super quiet lab, much smaller than the other lab I was at, only consisting of two departments that make up about no more than 10-15 of us per department. And we’re all on different shifts, so some days there are only about three or four of us in the lab. I think what stressed me out most about my prior job was when it got too loud and there were too many people and not enough space. It’s still a very stressful and high-pressure job, but the environment feels so much calmer somehow. I loved taking care of animals, but not having any animals to think about definitely removes a huge layer of stress. Animals definitely bring much more unpredictability to a job. And it’s just super fascinating to prepare formulations, to mix and measure things, and having that feeling of making a final product. It definitely reminds me of cooking or baking and following a recipe. While the job itself can be very stressful, actually preparing the formulations can feel calming somehow.

I finished my intro to herbalism course!

This was something that was on my list of goals for 2022. I started an Introductory Herbalism course at Herbal Academy but then ended up getting distracted by other things. I was also taking a palmistry class at the time, plus starting a new job later in the year also took up a lot of my energy. Just this past week I decided to jump back into it and finally finish it up. I would like to say that this random urge was totally connected to Saturn’s transit this week.

I learned a lot from this course! I definitely have a long way to go, but this was a huge step forward in my herbalism journey. What I’d like to focus more on now is the hands-on part and making more herbal concoctions. I restarted my aerogarden for growing more herbs. This is my third time around. The first two times, I got very overwhelmed by how fast all of the herbs were growing, and stopped taking care of them. So, hopefully third times a charm!

I plan on starting the intermediate course soon, which looks a lot more challenging. But before I go on, I do want to get more hands-on experience.

Medium Partner Program

Since being accepted to the Medium Partner Program in late November, I’ve had massive success in earnings. January was absolutely incredible because I made very close to $600 for my writing. But I do think that was a lucky break, and most of my earnings came from my “Horoscope for 2023” post. Besides that month, I’ve been making an average of a little over $100 per month. So far it seems like that is going to be the trend and I’m still really happy with that. I’m striving for more months of over $500, but I’m still super grateful for the months that I’ve made around $100. I would honestly be happy with making just $5. I still can’t believe I am making any money whatsoever from blogging; it’s an absolute privilege.

There are a lot of pros and cons to Medium. For the most part, I am double posting my articles on both Medium and this blog. But there are a few articles that I have strictly kept on Medium and do not plan on posting here. The privacy of Medium is both a benefit and a downfall: posting to a limited audience means that you’re not being heard by everyone, but it also allows me to post very personal thoughts and stories that I’m not comfortable posting on a completely public space. Another downside of Medium is the copyright issue — since I’m earning directly from my articles, I can’t use any images that I do not own, besides stock photos. So overall there’s a lot less freedom on Medium, but in turn that’s what allows me to make money. I definitely plan on keeping both blogs!

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