on Employment

I guess my first gig was walking around my neighborhood, shoveling snow from the sidewalks of neighbors for a few bucks a house. Earning business was simple - the bigger I could stretch my 10 year old smile while making the pitch, the liklier the homeowner was to pay me. This progressed to eventually working at the swimming pool, checking member passes when people came in. I graduated from that to seasonal work at the costume store, where I donned a 70's purple velour pimp outfit, with afro wig, and stood on the corner waving around a sign.I started the first job I had that really felt like a job in college. What I mean is: jobs are awful soul-sucking craters of despair, my first taste came while slicing half pounds of ham, working behind a deli counter, and wearing a hair net that covered a bald head. I decided midway through a cigarette break one day that deli life wasn't for me, and left without returning.After the deli, I found myself stumbling toward civic beautification by laboriously maintaining park grounds, riding around in a little truck with lawn trimming equipment, swatting at flies with a rubber gloved hand, painting fake rocks mustard brown and ruining old pairs of shoes. The repeated use of the phrase 'Git-r-done' and the sad realization that some co-workers were only a half-step away from being inmates drove me away.I landed in the comparatively posh world of retail next. Initially unloading trucks and stocking shelves at the electronics store Best Buy, I met the first truly asshole boss of my career, and found my way to the much happier (but sadly now defunct) environment of Tower Records, which at the perfect age of 19 was for certain, a 'dream' job.Tower was a candy-land of interestingness, the first place where I would have been happy to do my work even if they weren't paying me (not that they were paying me much.) Meandering among the stacks of rock music, films, books and magazines was mind-broadening in the cultural sense, and the cash register was a fair introduction to the world of people, goods, and money.Unfortunately, nothing gold can stay.So much has changed from job to job - what I interpret as normal in once place is completely absurd in another. The countless people I've worked with have all been different. Its hard to understand what exactly 'work' is, when it varies so much from place to place, and having moved around in different contexts, carrying bits with me from one to the next is both confusing and enlightening.After Tower, I found myself in my first 'office' job. Attached to a large warehouse was a small room with six outdated computers, a handful of old guys, and myself. Our task was digitizing boxes and boxes of legal documents. I worked with two guys named Tom, who sat next to each other and referred to each other as Tom ALL DAY LONG. 'Hey, Tom, did you check document W-13?'  -  'Yes, Tom, I did.'  -  'Thanks Tom.'  This inevitably drove me crazy and I left for lunch one day never to return.By this time, I was gathering a sense of what I liked about work, and what I didn't. Positive thing = listening to music all day.  Negative thing = small space with two Toms. I'm still figuring this part out, and I don't think anyone ever finishes.My concept of time management has changed more than anything else in my working life. In the beginning, there wasn't even really a notion of time-based tasks, other than my own presence. I thought showing up and being present was enough, managing time was irrelevant.In some early jobs,  I thought there was time where I had "nothing" to do. This concept of 'nothing to do' became less real as the jobs became more thought-intensive. I'm at a point now where there is ALWAYS something to do. If I don't have a specific task to work on, I spend time learning new skills.Now that I understand that the work never really ends, I struggle with choosing what to work on. Hard work leads to success, but figuring out which success is most fulfilling and where to apply energy has replaced "showing up" as the hard thing to do.