I’m 62 years old and I have been working on and off (mostly on) for 51 of those years.
At age 11 my first job was a paper route, a starting job I now consider mild child abuse. Back then, the paper boy bought his papers and earned a profit when the subscribers paid their bills. I don’t recall the exact numbers but I think the profit margin was about 10% assuming all of your subscribers paid their bill on collection day. Unfortunately, there were always enough non-paying subscribers to guarantee that I would either break even or lose money every week. The last straw for me was when I was attacked by a golden retriever who hated paperboys.
At 15, I began work as a busboy at a country club in Purchase, NY. If being a paperboy was mild child abuse, working at this place was an initiation into class discrimination.
The money was pretty good, but the hours were long and the work was hard. The toughest part was the disrespect we boys received from our boss. Our general manager, Jack, was all smiles with the members, but he treated me and my friends like dirt on his shoes. He did enjoy it, though, when we somewhat entitled kids busted our butts and I suppose that grew my tolerance for difficult work. Eventually, we learned how to accept his terror tirades as a part of his old school, he-man personality.
My next job was as a valet (car parker) at another Westchester country club. Thankfully, this job was not abusive. In fact, if there was any abuse it was given by me to the expensive cars on which I learned to drive a manual transmission. As a 17 year old kid, driving cars for money was seriously fun and I learned that some jobs are definitely better than others!
I wanted to make more money, so at 17 or 18 I began working at a local conference center as a catering waiter. Like all food and beverage jobs, this position had its pluses and minuses. Per usual, the clientele could be gracious and generous or, on occasion, quite rude and selfish. My favorite things about this job included the excellent training I received from more experienced waiters and captains and the camaraderie with the guys who worked alongside me. I learned about excellence at this job and it has served me well throughout my life.
During my late high school years and later in college, I continued to find work as a waiter, but I also started playing gigs as a musician. Almost immediately, I knew that this was the job I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I just didn’t know if I could make it as a professional and still have a family and pay the bills. For now, though, I had one more really great example of how important it was to have a job one liked. Much later, all of my decisions about what to do or not do for money were held up against that gold standard- is it fun?
In my twenties, though, I left the music business for 7 years. I was convinced that I had to make more money than I was earning from bar gigs, so I forgot about music and took a sales job in the commercial carpet industry. I literally turned off my artistic sensibilities and did my best to focus my grit and determination on being a successful businessman.
I got what I wanted. By age 28 I was pulling in over 100K and I could afford a decent apartment, a new car, clothes, dinners and vacations. But then one day I was walking down 23rd Street in Manhattan on my way to a client that was going to net me $35,000 and I just stopped dead in my tracks.
It came to me all at once like a knife in my gut that could not be ignored. By the time it reached my mouth, the words I said aloud were, “What the FUCK am I doing!”
And that was the moment I knew it – no amount of money was going to be enough to give up my soul. From then on, I knew that I would leave behind the sure thing for the right thing. I also knew it would be hard AND that I could do hard things. All of those shitty or difficult jobs taught me grit and it was time to use it to do what I really loved – music.
