Day in the Life of an Idiot

 I'd been waiting to follow-up on Mason's Saturday interview at the Science Museum until I posted the picture of him in his fancy outfit. We had to buy fancy shoes, too. He'd grown out of EVERYTHING.



It seemed to go as well as possible. From what he told us about the answers he gave to questions, he did as well as he could. Now it's up to luck and fate.  

I'm going to cross fingers for him because I've come to the conclusion that it really does sort of matter what kinds of first jobs you take.  Maybe not _so_ much in high school, but, when I was in college, I ended up taking a receptionist job because it was available and I figured "any work experience is good experience." Yeah.  Except guess what I was doing twenty years later? Same work. Same crappy pay. Every time I looked at a job outside of that area, I looked at my resume and realized that I had no experience to prove I'd be good at anything _other_ than answering phones.

If I hadn't had such crappy jobs that I could write novels while working them, I'd STILL be answering phones. Probably, in fact, I would have gotten a demotion because _no one_ needs secretaries to type their letters for them any more or file them. That's what Word does. (Go ahead and tell me that I'm wrong about this, but you know what I _mean_.)

The point is, had I to do it again, I might have been more picky about the things that went on to my resume. I would have found a way to focus more on the kinds of work I liked, teaching ESL, the cartooning classes I taught, etc.  I ended up where I wanted to be eventually, but I notice that Shawn's arc towards professional work started early. She was almost always better paid than I was, because she was almost always (except for those few stints at the Bookhouse and HalfPrice Books) doing work that was considered professional, rather than clerical.

I mean, maybe, if I went back in time and changed my resume, I would never have written a novel.  

But, it's hard to say. 

I still think it'd be nice if Mason started off on a more professional bent--I think, if nothing else, it gives him options. Shawn was always ABLE to land those gigs at bookstores, and then bounce back to professional work. I could NEVER break out of clerical---except in very narrow ways.

Probably I should have just taken the plunge and gotten a teaching license. 

Ah, hindsight.