You all are the sweetest; thank you guys so, so much. All I think I can really do for now is continue to apply to any and everything I can find and see if I can snag something. It sucks because I don't mind and enjoy my current job, even
with the long hours and all of the overtime, but it's just not possible to live any sort of decent life on what I'm making... at least not without the supplemental income of an SO or something. The others seem to be fairly comfortable, but I'm the only one of us who is doing it single. In the meantime, I'm going to try to sneak in a mention of pay during my annual review since I've officially been here for a full year now. We've had such a difficult time retaining and even just finding monitor techs and, from what I've heard, there's been some serious discussion about what they can do to keep us and increase morale. If I could just make $15-16/hr, that would go far. I don't need to be wealthy or even anywhere near it, but I want to be able to, y'know, afford to pay back student loans and rent and other bills.
😛 Unfortunately, it sounds like the decision isn't really up to my boss (who, to be fair, has gone to bat for me a couple of times), but simply what it is that corporate thinks we should make. I don't want to leave this job or this hospital, but I absolutely will unless my pay gets bumped up to something that I can live on.
I did some searching around, and it appears that the absolute cheapest housing option I can find within a reasonable commuting distance would still cost >50% of my monthly salary. So the options are basically a) get another raise or b) look for something better. I figure if I attack both sides, then hopefully one of those two will eventually happen. If not, then I could look into government assistance if need be, though, knowing my luck, I imagine that I'm stuck in that annoying area where I make too much to qualify for any help but too little to make it alone.
My parents have actually come back to me and apologized for what they said, which I appreciate. They've been very accommodating and understanding of my situation up until now so it was honestly surprising to me that they came to me with an outright ultimatum like that. That said, I don't know how serious they're being; I've been told that I'll always have a place to live with them and I can't see them actually literally forcing me out. They're just not like that. I
do think they're trying to give me some more push and, yeah, I probably need a bit of that, but I don't know if calling me lazy and a failure and a ****ing child was the way to go about it. Either way, I have several months so I'm hopeful that something will come along in that time period and... hey, I am actually am earning and managing to save a little bit of money, which is a far better position to be in than the one I was in for the majority of last year.
I think things will be okay. I'm just trying to breathe and keep my eyes on the future; I'm not in crisis mode yet.
I'm glad to see that this epic saga had a good ending.

There's a reason why I tend to avoid FedEx when ordering or shipping items.