2000 The Year Writing.Com Was Born

2000, The Year That Writing.com was born.

My son graduated from high school that June.  I had been a single parent and was very proud of the fact that he graduated 9th in his class. 

It was an uneasy year for me.  I had been laid off of my job as a Computer Systems Analyst because of the Y2K scare.  I spent the first four months of the year with Jackson-Hewitt – preparing income tax returns.  That was great fun but didn’t pay very well; especially since I’d worked my way up to fifty dollars an hour as a computer consultant. 

I went to as many job fairs as I could find – which paid off when I saw a flyer for a program at BTTI – a business and technical adult education training facility.  The program was in Accounting and would be paid for by the State of California.  Get free training?  Sign me up!!  I enjoyed the classes although I didn’t get to take them all.  The program was twenty one weeks: the State required that I complete the course in fourteen weeks; which I did, with flying colors.  The entire curriculum included an Introduction to Computers component.  I’d been working in the computer field for 28 years up to that point – I actually helped tutor my fellow students.  The course ended, for me, in July – I found my first bookkeeping job less than a month later: at a company whose dress code was jeans and sneakers!  Can you say “heaven”? 

Things were not so rosy at home – my ex didn’t like the reduction in income as it cut sharply into his gambling money.  For some reason it never did occur to him to go get his own job.  Any money he made would have been his to keep – and to buy his alcohol, to which he was also addicted.