I Remember...Working

One of my favorite books on writing is Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones. One of her writing prompts in this book is "I remember".

When I look back on my twenties, one of the things that strikes me the most is how much they were defined by my work experiences. I spent more time working than doing anything else.

1. I remember doing several internships in college. I always wanted to be a professor, but I figured it would be good to get work experience in other fields in case I needed a Plan B. I soon learned that when many people think of the intern, they think, "Ugh, I do NOT want to stuff all these envelopes, clean out the file cabinet, or make dozens of calls. I know! Let's get the intern to do it so that we can all leave early! And let's make sure to look sympathetic when we dump all this work on her, so that she can't tell that on the inside we're laughing gleefully about the fact that we don't have to do any of this crap."

2. I remember working at my desk in the office that I shared with other graduate students on a Friday night. A group of grad students were getting ready to go out to a bar (not one of them invited me to come along), and one of them laughed when she saw me still sitting at my desk. She said, "It's Friday night," not in the robotic yet catchy way that Rebecca Black sang it, but as if it was some kind of social crime to stay in and work on a Friday night.

3. I remember wanting to hurl my books at them and reply with some witty retort, but I couldn't think of anything to say. It's too bad my "inner writer" had apparently taken the day off and couldn't come up with something equally condescending for me to say back to them, something like, "You're right! I mean, it's not like you guys don't burn the midnight oil every other night; the fact that I choose to work on a Friday night automatically means that I'm a loser!"

4. I remember working at the concession stand of a movie theater one summer and observing the way that people would get really emotional over their snacks. For example, one of my coworkers put butter on a bag of popcorn for a customer, only to get yelled at; the customer started screaming, "NO! I said NO BUTTER!" Everyone looked at the customer, not my coworker, with pity, because it's obviously the worst thing in the world if a cashier gets your order wrong. (The customer is always right...and will never let you forget it.)

5. I remember working in retail and how a nice customer once offered me a tip for being so helpful with his order, but I wasn't allowed to take it because it was against the store's "policy".

6. I remember working in a bookstore and how customers would often ask me for directions to various other places in Chicago. If I didn't know the answer, they would actually hold up the line at the cash register for several minutes because they wanted me to ask my other coworkers for specific directions on what was the best restaurant to go to or how to get to Navy Pier. I resisted the urge to say, "Um, I can't tell you how to get to Navy Pier, but I can direct you to our travel section where there are dozens of tourist guides on Chicago. I can also direct you to some etiquette books on how to not make your cashier totally lose it."

7. I remember how my hands shook the first time I wrote on the chalkboard during my very first class as a teacher.

8. I remember how I burst into tears at least once a week during my first few months as a teacher, just because I felt so overwhelmed. I'd be at home watching TV; a random commercial would come on and all of a sudden the tears would start flowing and wouldn't stop. I don't cry that often anymore, though I do still occasionally wring my hands at certain commercials, particularly the ones featuring "Wives", i.e., Basketball Wives, Mob Wives, Real (Annoying) Housewives, etc.

9. I remember how my high school students showed me poems and rap lyrics that they had written. It was so refreshing to see that they were learning to view writing as a way to express themselves and not just as something that they had to do for school.

10. I remember how I started writing in coffeehouses as a way to take a break from all the other work that I always had to do. Being able to enjoy good food and coffee while writing something that wasn't constructive criticism on students' papers or notes on my graduate research was a relief. My fiction writing became a comforting escape, especially because it was the one thing in my life that didn't feel like work. It soothed me enough to keep me from breaking down in tears in front of my students, hurling books at my classmates, or yelling back at rude customers. As long as I got to keep writing regularly, I had something to look forward to. And that made everything else a little more bearable.

What about you? When you look back over your work experiences, what are the first things that come to mind? What was something that helped you deal with the not-so-good experiences?

One of my favorite fellow bloggers, Richard Boemcke (whose writing always makes me wish that there were guys like him who lived in Chicago) recently released the pilot episode of his Web series, "Twentease", which he also wrote and starred in. I watched the first episode and I'm already intrigued; it's "a show about people not making it in their twenties". Check it out! I think you'll like it too.


Twentease - Pilot Webisode from Richard Boehmcke on Vimeo.