Speaking of milestones, I have been doing my current job for almost two years, which, pathetically is more or less a record of duration for me. When I was a recently transferred college student living at home I had a job at a fish shack in decline for about that long but just as we were approaching the slow season I arrived one day to find a note on the door informing all employees to expect last checks and further instruction in the mail. Obviously neither ever arrived and that was my penultimate day as a waitress; more on that later. The only other long term gig on my erratic resume was at The Group W Bench, the coolest little head shop in New Haven, CT and perfect part time job for a student of pottery, Buddhas, kitch, candles, semi-precious stones, instruments, Indonesian flying women, tin toys, whimsical clothing and other exotic miscellany. I worked there with Malcolm before he left us for his dot.com flight of Icharus and subsequent NYC success, and past graduation. Anecdotes of this place and these people are an entry, possibly a short book in themselves.

Next was my first and only real, grown up job at a publishing company in New York. I had a business card and a desk and everything. I quit that after about a year for myriad reasons that aren’t very funny so we’ll just gloss over that. I spent some time at ACORN, organizing child care workers and discovering some of Brooklyn’s less gentrified neighborhoods. I left the non-profit world forever in the early spring after almost securing a receptionist position at a magazine in Manhattan. Unfortunately I was not presenting well at the time and I did not win that or any of the other 22 positions I interviewed for that cruel city season. I still don’t know exactly why that was, but I have finally admitted that I was probably still looking a little immature and possibly depressed, not the right energy for most places. I was also told I was “overqualified” numerous times over which I just started to assume was code for “we think your shoes look cheap”.

I lived in Williamsburg and collected unemployment which is still humiliating to recall as I went on all these fruitless first, second and third meetings and stomped around the streets of Cooler Than School, unsure of what to do. It was at this time that I worked in a Mafia-run red sauce restaurant for all of one shift. I had previously thought that goosing was kind of an urban myth or old wives tale but it was on this fateful night at Lorenzo’s that I actually experienced thumb and forefinger squeezing a pinch of my bottom, which was enough to send me out the door without my share of the tips. I also temped as a part time night receptionist for a firm that organized outings for highly educated urban professionals. I don’t remember why I left there. I also found Darren on craiglist in this hazy, hungry period and started doing his assignments for Religion 101 while he worked in finance and finished his degree by mail.

I followed that up at Ab Ovo a tiny makeup store in Cobble Hill owned by Sally a beautiful Canadian mother my own age who intimidated me and trusted me to do custom foundation blending, which was kind of cool but also a little closer to strangers’ pores than I like to be. When her business closed I moved down the street to an artisan owned jewelry collective where I mostly read the Times and ate miso soup but had some nice rainy Sundays. I left there when I got the job with Jim to write the subtle energy and nutrition book and moved back to Connecticut, but we all know how that ended. It was the best working months of my life. A few days after that dismaying demise I found Bud Stone and the Graduate Institute and learned a lot and was hurt a lot and read a lot and ate exquisite chocolate which was great but decided to leave because I wasn’t making any career progress and was starting to sense it was time to figure out what I should be doing.

That was the summer I signed up with Kelly Services and decided to put my effort into being a teacher. After one week at assorted grammar schools I was offered a long term job at a local high school teaching photography and graphic design two subjects I knew next to nothing about. I gave report card grades and sat through parent/teacher conferences and outside the bathroom duty and though I had a lot of support in the art department, after one semester I was tired of being stopped for my hall pass and asked to the prom and more than that, I realized that adolescents weren’t my cup of tea. I did finally learn a little Adobe Illustrator and relearned some darkroom skills and sat in the library and re-read some old favorites and got to find out what happens in the teachers’ lounge so it wasn’t a total bust. I was more confused than ever when I left there and took a job as a secretary at Bear Path Elementary until I got my head straight. I read morning announcements and coaxed the quotidian kid into saying the pledge into the speaker and typed the lunch menu and re-read my favorite Newbury classics and was a hit with teachers and kids alike but decided to leave that job as well, this time with bigger plans ahead

This was late spring of ‘06 and though I didn’t completely believe it was going to happen we were tentatively planning our journey to Mexico. I took one last job as the Kudeta hostess and whiled my summer away being a nocturnal asshole. Then we skipped town and for about 6 months I was unemployed, again. This time was a blast. I had class, exploring and well, that’s about it, but it was a welcome relief from feeling spun every day hating my workday and wondering where I went wrong. I had been a good student, dutiful, precocious, and life after university was proving to be not for me. I was happy to take the job I have now in order to feel useful, because even though I really know how to use my time wisely and well, you do start to feel like a bit of a slug when you aren’t contributing anything to the household or macro economy. That’s pretty much up to the present and it works out with my current lifestyle. I can’t complain. It’s just work after all, or is it? According to the great American writer Studs Terkel, “work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread”, and so, I suppose, my quest continues. I fortunately find humor and some resonance in the reminiscence so perhaps for me the process is my career more than any one practice.

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