Odd Jobs

My first odd job was in high school. My mom worked for the local newspaper, and back then people were still manually inserting business ads into those newspapers, so Mom would go there on Tuesday and Friday nights after her day shift and work however many hours it took to get all the papers filled and ready to go out for the Wednesday and Sunday issues. I started tagging along and they actually started paying me. I felt like a grown up. I was buying my own gas and meals and everything. It was pretty fun. 

When I went off to college for my first year, I was pretty much getting a free ride there and I had money leftover each semester that I could divide over a couple months to survive. So I didn’t have to work that year, not until I came back to my hometown to finish school. At A&M Texarkana, I worked the front desk at the dorms and I worked at Home Depot to pay the bills. It was about that time that my roommate and I decided to go halves on an off campus apartment, so I really did need those hours. But I can’t believe I thought $605 a month HALVED was a lot of money back then. If I could go back and tell the old me how much she would be paying in Colorado to live right next to Union Station, I’m fairly certain this present day version of myself wouldn’t exist right now because she would have had a heart attack. 

I also got the privilege of working at the college again when I got offered a research assistant job to help my professor with an ongoing project. Me and my college friend got to hang out and make people memorize Swahili word pairs and run on a treadmill and do puzzles. It was pretty cool. 

I “worked” at a local escape room for like two whole minutes before I just decided to quit through text and not go back. It seemed very unofficial, and sporadic, so it just didn’t pan out even though at the time I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I was a little disappointed about that one. But that place has since shut down.

When I moved to Dallas with Caleb, that’s when my wonky career path continued. I don’t know if anyone has told you, but it’s not easy to get a job with a Psychology bachelors if you’re not working towards a Masters or a Doctorate after that. So no Psych jobs for me. But I was also never taught how to fill out an application or to interview properly, so looking back I know that was a big part of why things didn’t work out. And so I got a part time job at a before and after school nonprofit daycare, and I Ubered on the side of that. 

I didn’t do too shabby at the daycare, and during the time I was there I got to work at a handful of different schools and by the end of my “daycare career” I was filling in for the Site Manager when she wasn’t there and eventually I became a manager of my own site. But that was a short chapter. I started off with a bang, first day on my new job, sleeping through my alarm and driving like a madwoman to get to the school to unlock the gym where angry parents and confused children were waiting and demanding answers from my assistant who had no key or any clue what was going on, meanwhile with my boss spam calling me while I’m driving like a speed demon just trying to get there so I don’t make things any worse. Needless to say that never happened again, and I made it a good little while doing that, returning to the school I started at but soon deciding I wanted to go back to college for art again - another venture that didn’t last too long - and that I was over the pressures of keeping up with children, their allergies, and CPR rules and all that. 

When I say I Ubered, it’s honestly a joke. I was excited at first, and on my first day I drove someone an hour and a half away and made $37 and I was so happy that I went home. But after a while I realized it wasn’t for me. I wasn’t willing to put in the extra work to make it worthwhile, like work in the high demand surge areas when concerts let out and the like. It just didn’t sound appealing to me to have to deal with all that traffic and all the belligerent people. And there were a couple times where I did question if I was safe out there driving at night. 

I also learned I didn’t want to have to cater to snooty strangers who could literally select in the app before they’re picked up if: A) They want the A/C on or off and B) Whether they wanted you to talk to them or not. Like, do I say hello at all? It was weird. And after I got into a car accident - a very minor one that wasn’t my fault on that unfortunate rainy morning in Dallas - I was just too shaken up and fed up. So I went home crying to Caleb that I couldn’t do that anymore either, and that’s when the daycare and Uber chapter of my life ended, and Caleb gave me a month to just apply to jobs and try to find something before the end of the year. It was December, and my hopes were pretty low. 

I applied and applied and applied, and I got one promising option, but since it was near the holidays, I did my phone and in person interview and then I didn’t hear anything for weeks. When I did get the call I was just relieved that I had a job again, and at the start I thought it was a decent one. It was my first big girl job anyway, and they were paying me double digits upwards of what I was used to getting paid before so I just eagerly accepted what they gave me and just tried to be the best employee I could be. I learned a lot and met some great people there, but eventually I learned there was more than meets the eye with that company. 

As I did at the daycare, I moved up the ranks at my payroll job. I didn’t really ask for it, but before I knew it I was running my own payroll unit that no one else wanted to deal with and then I was later asked, after many people tried and failed before me and either got fired or got out while they could, to run an even bigger and even more difficult payroll for a guy that didn’t want to work with me to get things done. That lasted a week before I respectfully stepped back down to my former role as less important payroll coordinator.

Things just got worse somehow after that. And so on and so forth, until the day came that the person who did take over the unit I stepped down from told me she was quitting and that this was her “right now” notice. I was mortified at the thought of running things on my own, when we were already spread thin and I was in the middle of training a new girl who had no idea what she was getting into, so I called my old team lead who left the company previously and begged for her help. She wrote my resignation letter and told me to send it. So I did, and then I closed my laptop, returned my stuff to the office the following Monday, and I never looked back. And that was the end of my big girl career. 

At this point, I had no idea what I was going to do. I had a trip to New York planned to see my cousin before Caleb and I got married, and that was about all I knew. But I’m lucky to have such a supportive husband, because he decided to let me take some time to figure out what I wanted, and I got to explore some creative outlets over the last couple years that helped get me where I am now. At first we wanted an indie game studio, but the one thing that I realize now looking back is that I wanted a platform to tell good stories. And that’s what drove me to writing eventually, after I wallowed for a while and was just at a loss at what to do with my life.

And so the last year I’ve been writing, writing, writing, and here I am. I hope this is my last job, that I can succeed at it, love it, and make a sustainable living off of it in time, so I can support mine and Caleb’s creative dreams and we can do what we do best. I don’t think there’s a mold that I fit out there in the working world. And I have a Psychology degree that I don’t use but I absolutely don’t believe that it was a waste of time. Across all my odd jobs and life experiences, I’ve met amazing people, I’ve learned so much about myself and the world, and I’ve realized what I really want, albeit many years later. But that sounds about right. I’d say it’s still a life well lived and learned.