Day jobs

No one ever told me that I’d be come a jack of all trades and master of none, if I became an artist. That my life would be filled with myriad meaningless day jobs. They said get a real job. I didn’t listen. I danced from job to job. I began young following my passion, supporting hopeless causes. To support my horse rescued from the glue factory, I was a babysitter, gardener, errand runner, stall shoveler, horse exerciser, salad girl. When she died, there were more horses and ponies to support, I was a stray equine magnet perennially in debt to my vet. In my Junior year, I sold off the last of the ponies and became a waitress in Switzerland, to see the Alps. I got stranded there when the airlines went belly up. To put myself through college, I was a small tarot press manager (where I became pen pals with Ken Kesey), a housemaid, a house cleaner, au pair for the rockstars and the rich (wi’ a cuppa tae in me hond with Fleetwood Mac)—and that was all before I hung my artist hat up and took up the mantle of poetry. Somewhere along the way there was love. And travel.  I’ve been a caterer, server, bartender (don’t talk to me about slippery nipples), an independent newspaper paste-up and layout troglodyte (we worked all night), a darkroom film developer, photographer and writer (I met lots of famous people while wearing my ace cub reporter hat, not to mention my usher duds), a graphic artist and calligrapher, an Elderhostel lecturer on local history and geography, arts facilitator and presenter, seller of Dish satellite TV antennae (apparently I was good, I won a Mickey Mouse watch, but watches don’t like me). I’ve even been an extra in movies (with Brian Cox, and a glaring Faye Dunaway), and TV series—a face-to-face with Cheech, where I played a reporter—and I’ve never seen any of those clips. I’ve been a madcap storyteller for school literacy programs. Before the pandemic I was an intreprid traveler, a petsitter, a housesitter, a Living History silk artist teacher/storyteller, and a whisky wench for Highland Gameses, educator-trainer, artist in the schools, both poetry and art, I am still hard at it, still waltzing, though I approach my 70th year filled with curiosity and trepidation that I made it this far without ever having held down a real job. Well, unless you count that stint at Trader Joe’s where I learned the rules of commerce, and became their top cheesemonger, but it was a place where the customer is always right, and haughtier than hell, and more than willing to take you to the cleaners for the most minor of infractions. What can I say, my face was an open book. I didn't have to practice my fuckyouverymuch smile. It came naturally. But that’s where I met Rita Moreno and we danced in the aisles after her hip surgery. Oh, how we danced. And laughed. Poetry was my beacon, my true north. I’ll dance to it. I only just now learned the full phrase is “a jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.” Hear, hear.

What were some of your day jobs to support your habit?

4/9 PAD