You worked where?

A list of weird and wondrous workplaces

The writing prompt is after the octopuses. The daily typing out thoughts after the sparkling hearts. Always feel free to jump ahead to write on the prompt.

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I’m in the cafe where I tried hosting the 9am weekly writing group. Both of the writers who came at the beginning have found jobs on Wednesday mornings and I’m super happy for them. I was going to quit coming here to write, but I like this cafe and having this ritual. Plus I have a meeting here at 10am to talk about joining a theatre company.

WHAT. Yep. I’ve oft exclaimed that this town I am living in now is magic. That it’s full of opportunities to do the things you love. Full of dreamers making their dreams happen. It is. I can’t leave the house (and sometimes I’m texted opportunities in my house 💖!) without running into some new wondrous thing.

This year is for writing, that’s what I said. But it turns out that this year is also for living. For meeting fellow creatives and dreamers and wondrous humans. Which I know is informing the things I write.

Today I put my bright pink poster about whimsical writing back on the community board at the cafe. Just in case someone wants to come write with me. But if no one shows, I’m still out in the world. I’m listening to snippets of enthusiastic voices. I’m drinking a delightful chai with espresso and oat milk in a glass. I’m looking out the window at the brashness of an early spring trying to gently push winter out of the way with a February rainstorm. I’m appreciating the being around people but being temporarily separate. At 9am, if no one shows, I will open the draft of my novel and write until the theatre folks show up.

The tenor of light in here is bright grey from natural light; perfect for my brain.

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Whimsical prompt

Tell me about an unbelievable job you’ve had.

I think instead of one job I’m going to try to write a list of all the jobs I’ve ever had. My child is always exclaiming that it’s impossible that I’ve done as much as I’ve done. But I remind him that I started working early, moved out at 18 and didn’t always work at these places for very long. So I think I’ve been “working” for over 30 years at this point.

Working (an incomplete (likely) list)

Jobs in Northern Manitoba

•babysitter- (age 12-15) I was one of the island teenagers not really interested in teenagering. Plus I wanted to buy a drum kit. And I had to pay for that time I backed into my mom’s best friend’s car in our driveway.

•library page (15) my best friend at the time got me the job, but I didn’t like calling the patrons to tell them their books were late and was punished by being assigned to dust the ENTIRE three floor library. I memorized the dewy decimal system while doing that and sometimes surreptitiously read books that expanded my brain (Geek Love).

•event coordinator for Club 53 (at 16 years old)

•singer in an alt rock group (16-18). We played school dances, and the occasional festival.

•confectionery clerk (15-18,19) the interview for this job was three questions. Are you pregnant? No. Do you intended to get pregnant? No! Do you like to party? Definitely not! And I was hired and worked there after school sometimes five and six days a week. It kept me mostly out of trouble, caused my parents to buy me a $500 car when I was 16 so they didn’t have to pick me up at midnight, and exposed me to my first robbery at knife point. This confectionery is where I learned most of my peopling skills, and where I fell into the natural role of predictive people pleaser.

•the summer I return from university I work three jobs: baker, truck stop diner server, bartender and comfortable confectionery clerk

Jobs in Winnipeg

•campus and community radio dj and MC at live events( unpaid but one of my favourite ever jobs) age 18-20, my recorded laugh would go on to be *the* laugh at the radio station, and all the dudes would press the button when they thought they were being funny. My laugh was widely known and made laughing in public awkward.

•actor (theatre)

•summer copy clerk for three floors of corporate lawyers, they wanted me to dress in workplace fancy, but I was on the floor covered in toner ink most of the time so I refused

•confectionery at the university, where me and another best friend would talk about politics, girl crushes and the mystery of modern day corn

•a strange blue jean warehouse store in a rough part of town where I found out the people making the jeans worked upstairs, and I’m not sure how legal it all was?

•expediter at Applebee’s where I learned the importance of consolidation of tasks, and met my first long term boyfriend, and was introduced to the rave scene

•a host at a fancy restaurant when my boss regularly hit me in the kidneys from behind, and punched my cheeks so hard they turned red, and my manager shifted me on Sundays to try to break up my relationship with my boyfriend. The food was good.

•clerk, then wine consultant and Sunday manager at the MLCC. A government owned liquor store with decent pay ($8 an hour! $13 when I was managing) and I didn’t drink at the time, so it was kind of the best place to work. (I worked there for 3 years)

•retail clerk at a rave clothing shop (originally on Sundays before the liquor commission decided to open Sundays)

•server at an Italian restaurant with the best manicotti and tiramisu made by my boss’s mother

(A lot of these jobs were concurrent and somehow I still managed to do theatre, watch movies, and help to organize large scale raves. I’m not sure I slept)

I moved to Vancouver in 2002 thinking I would apply for my masters in English literature (I didn’t)

•TESL teacher (I taught English as a second language at a questionable college, during my time getting my certificate there)

•chocolate store manager in which I discovered moths were regularly laying eggs in the chocolate. I quit after two days.

•Candy store clerk for two shops. One owned by a terrifying narcissist and one owned by the sweetest man on earth. Which led me to…

•Candy kiosk clerk in the basement of a downtown mall where I wasn’t allowed to take breaks or see natural light for 9 hours a day and my boss accused me of stealing when I wouldn’t raise the price of cotton candy from $5.99 to $9.99 (I quit)

•cell phone salesperson for half a day until I realized I’m too good at selling and hated hooking people into contracts

•Nanny to two wondrous children for a cool couple. But then I was also farmed out to less cool families who tried to get away with paying me poverty wages

•caretaker in a building with two apartments in exchange for rent, but also involved me moving in with my boyfriend of 11 days because my lease was ending

•costume designer for a horror movie (this is a strange story but a good one that enabled me to free myself from the being stuck in that apartment)

•retail clerk at the brilliant fruit/culinary store on Granville island that kickstarted my obsession with knowing everything about fruit.

I had to break up with the entirety of Vancouver to remove myself from the situation I’d gotten into with my boyfriend

I applied for school in Ottawa, and was accepted. I met a man my age online and we fell in love over the course of the months I was planning to leave Vancouver.

That man would become my first spouse. And the father of my children.

Ottawa

•volunteer coordinator and radio DJ at the campus and community radio station (I miss that place)

•student summer intern at CIPO (Canadian Intellectual Property Office) for the Canadian government. I was responsible for helping to redraft content their intranet. This is the job that made me switch my whole career path. I left the communication department to get a teaching certificate.

•slam poetry event coordinator (for years)

•professional poet

•fruit store employee, again

•server at a beloved Mexican restaurant in downtown Ottawa (it is exhausting, I last not very long)

•substitute teacher at a preschool

•grade 7&8 teacher

We moved to a small wondrous town after we got married. Bought a house.

•bookstore employee for one of the coolest little bookstores.

•rural slam poetry coordinator

•I teach teachers how to teach spoken word poetry

•artist educator for Learning Through the Arts, bringing slam poetry into rural schools

•first time parent. Parenting becomes my job. I try to continue with the arts. I try to work at the bookstore

•daytime event coordinator/director for the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word

(I’m only 29 at this point)

•at 32 I become a parent for the second time

•I parent. I try to work at the bookstore. I try to write. I try to be a poet. I am so tired. I am heartachingly lonely.

My husband puts his resume into the world. He is hired three days later by a corporation outside Seattle. We have a month to coordinate our lives. We move to Bellevue, not Seattle. Most definitely not Seattle.

I am not allowed to work. I don’t have a visa. I am not a real recognized person by the state. I am a hanger-on.

•I parent and start a blog based on the book 642 Things to Write About. I write every day. I take up stand up comedy.

•Stand up comedy consumes me.

•stand up comedian

Our marriage ends, but we find ways to co-parent and continue living together. We move into Seattle proper.

•volunteer producer of comedy shows. Volunteer booker for a cool old venue.

I get my green card. I CAN BE PAID TO WORK.

•I am hired by The Moth to coordinate two monthly shows, this becomes my life. I continue to coordinate comedy, sadness and storytelling shows. I am coordinating, sometimes, three and four shows a week while parenting during the days.

•I am volunteer coordinator for large scale events for an organization that raises money for women

•I run Fringe shows

•I fall in love with my now spouse over the course of several months. They attend my shows, and we stay up until the wee hours of the morning. My kids are in school. I drive them to school and then I nap all day. I pick them up and we play at the park until their Dad comes home.

•I work for a queer org bringing storytelling into schools. My program is called Messages of Support.

•I coordinate large scale weekly, monthly, new years events for a giant private group.

•one of my favourite jobs is at a store that sells local indie art that is just incredible. My boss is a former comedian and she lets me sell my soap there.

•Soap Wizard (not joking, this was my actual business name)

We decide to move back to Canada, back to the the town where our children are born. I have to leave my partner in Seattle. Assured they will follow soon after.

•I go back to working at the bookstore

•I teach at my children’s school

•I see a building for lease. This becomes five year journey (struggles and joy) to run my own creative community space. Which I do, in three different spaces. Two pre-stroke, one post-stroke.

The pandemic happens. I parent. I make magic. We film nature documentaries, we do daily puppet shows, we record albums, we write books, we cook, we garden, we raise monies for charities, we read, we laugh, we miss my partner who is so far away. I run a daily art community online. I run weekly storytelling shows virtually. I am a publicist for a book that wins awards and we put it into second printing. I am a publicist for a theatre company. I make magic so much magic.

After my 42nd birthday, I have a stroke.

But a month later I am walking again, feeling like my dream is not done. My friend tells me she wants to move her business to another building. I try one more time at creating a community space.

The last iteration is MAGIC. It is exactly what I dreamed my whole life. I am a creative director, an arts educator and purveyor of a strange wondrous space for outsiders, neurodivergent folks, writers, artists of all ages, gentle hearted storytellers. Every Monday my good friends run a cafe in the space. I make art. I sell my monsters, my bog witches, my painting and teach soap pouring. We have a home schooled group come in. I read to kids and relocate stuffed animals from collections that are donated to the shop. But most of all, I listen. I comfort. I care.

A property company buys the building and raises the monthly cost of running the space from $700 to $2000. They charge me $3000 for the year before because my original “landlord didn’t charge me enough”. My heart breaks. It is all legal. The lawyers say. I can’t afford any of this. My community raises money to help me pay the overage and I help the property company find a new tenant.

We decide to move out east. Where my children’s father was born.

Here I am now.

And my current list of jobs are:

•post office clerk/barrista/whimsical retail human

•bookstore hand seller

•art maze helper

•grant writer/fundraiser for a theatre company

•writer for the local monthly arts/newspaper

•writer working on a novel, three mid-grade adventures and a children’s book

•parent to two wondrous kids

and right now my inner 11 year old is so very excited about my life. And my outer 44 year old is incredibly excited too.

This was such an enlivening exercise. (I feel like I missed a few things! But I was delightful to go back and view my life through this lens)

Heart,

Wake

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