Every Job I’ve Ever Had
(updated 27/8/22)
I was once the deli girl at a grocery store in a nearly one-stoplight town.
Which, was about the same time I worked as a lifeguard,
at the indoor pool across the street from my rural high school.
In-door so we could swim through frigid midwestern winters.
But, before that, I taught swim lessons,
I think, before I was legally old enough to work.
Teaching the littlest kids to move their arms and legs
on land, while they got the hang of the breathing,
before they tried the real thing in the cold water.
In 8th grade I started taking tickets at the only movie theater
in town, we didn’t have a proper cash register
and had to make change in our heads.
Being John Malkovich was playing when I started.
Detasseling corn was the next job and I worked in
agriculture until I left for college in New Mexico.
Where, I worked at the ski school for the free lift-ticket,
facilitated sex-education workshops for my college peers,
worked the night shift at an emergency youth shelter,
and folded jeans at the mall (Hollister, because
in 2006 they paid a whopping $10.50 an hour).
There were also the catering gigs, and
minding the gear truck on film sets—which
was only slightly better than fetching coffee.
The first summer of college I came home to direct
a summer theatre production put on by my high school.
It was that summers murder mystery.
My friend Katie wore my junior prom dress in the play.
After undergrad I thought I hit the jackpot—
I was a ‘content producer’ with health insurance at a tech startup,
which really only amounted to a year and a half of constant sexual harassment.
Culminating in my anatomy being the reason for my termination. You see,
vaginas turned out to be very expensive health-insurance-wise,
and I had the only one in the office. “You understand.”
So I became a barista and a waitress, so I could afford
to be an ethical freelance photographer.
In high school I started working for friends of my parents
who were wedding photographers and I’ve continued working
in the wedding industry—industrial complex—as a photographer
and photographers’ assistant for the last two decades.
When I got into grad school, the first interview I conducted
for my thesis research was with a military lawyer,
I didn’t realize I was the one being cross examined.
After the interview she asked me to be her nanny. I had
babysat for neighbor kids since I was 10, so I became a nanny.
At the same point, I was the education coordinator for
a doomed photography festival. But it offered the only avenue
to teaching. You see, the (now tenured) abuse of my grad program
roadblocked entering teaching the typical way; teaching as a grad student.
Graduate teaching positions were given to my white male peers,
and to classmates uninterested in becoming professors.
After grad school I moved home to become the caretaker of
my grandmother, and in the process became a real art teacher.
First, teaching photography to newly resettled high school youth,
finding each student their own digital camera, donated by the community.
Equipment that was theirs to keep.
Teaching international students during the summers—
it was technically just a special effects photography class, but
students were asked to photograph intangible things like their emotions
in an effort to stretch their language skills. As well as build
their emotional intelligence and visual literacy
(they were middle-schoolers).
Then, briefly teaching digital photo editing and web design
at the Union for Contemporary Art. To the white folks who
pay a premium to take classes there.
Nearly a decade of documenting the fight against KeystoneXL, and
just as much time feeling trapped in the racist nonprofit industrial complex.
There were also the gigs where I had to sign a nondisclosure agreement, so.
I’d been welding since high school, and earned a professional
welding certificate while caring for Nana. Working first as a fabricator,
then a welding instructor. Covid turned me into a virtual welding instructor.
An oxymoron. In high school, my classmates had welded hitches for their trucks
or farm equipment. I made art that ended up rusting in my folks front yard.
Now a days I work at the neighbor’s uniform factory and pick
another neighbor’s coffee as well as being a welder for hire.
Freelancing, again. Across industry boundaries.
With my husband, I am a farmer like my grandparents before me, but
I am also a college professor? (Lol not really, only an adjunct)
teaching about materials and sustainability (probably—
but definitely settler colonialism), via a tiny screen in the bosque. But, y’all, I was once
the deli girl at a grocery store in a nearly one-stoplight town.