I am a writer. It’s taken me this long to admit that to myself. It still feels weird saying it to anyone else, perhaps because it’s a leisure pursuit, not a career, and keeping a blog is so 2010. I’m quite good actually, or at the very least, better than AI. I’ve never tried capitalizing on this craft for a mixed-bag of limp excuses: laziness, fear of rejection, procrastination, everyone thinks they’re a writer, imposter syndrome. But tucked in between all the self-doubt is the very real notion that I’m wary of putting financial value on something so invaluable to me. If I relied on stringing words together to pay my bills, something in the dynamic shifts. 

Would I still be intrinsically motivated? What happens when a hobby becomes a job? Do you simply find new hobbies? Sure sure, do what you love, love what you do and all that, I know. But I also know what goes down if I spend all day every day doing the same thing. I squeezed an English major on top of an abandoned (but not discarded) journalism degree my senior year of college, and I didn’t pick up a book for years after that. It’s still hard to get me back on track. And I absolutely love(d?) to read.

But writing, mmm. It’s like the good perfume. I keep it displayed on the pretty shelf, always there right when I need it. A little spritz, a refresher, a puff of something nice. A beautiful reminder, a much needed exhale. If I were required to write, would I even want to? The thing about hobbies is you get to rendezvous with them on your own time. Creativity flows when it chooses, worry not about blocks, just ride that wave when it comes crashing in.

What I do to pay the bills is the least interesting thing about me, and something I avoid talking about, mostly out of guilt. My dude is a nurse on a transplant unit. The nights he works, B forces his circadian rhythm to dance to a different beat. It’s hard on his mind and body and sometimes on us, but gosh darnit, he’s a natural. Whether administering meds, wiping ass or taking sass, he has this gift of meeting people where they’re at, putting them at ease. Relating, commiserating. A giver of care. A caregiver. Sometimes I tweak some code, pat myself on the back and call it a day.

I’m not saying I don’t work hard. I’ve been on somebody’s payroll almost a decade longer than I’ve been an adult. Some kids get an allowance, we got paychecks for real work. I had three jobs over the course of high school. In college I bartended ~40 hours a week as a full-time student, just to pump that money right back into the system.

Every job, assignment, task and volunteer gig over the past four decades swirl together, taking shape as one of those ‘master of the obvious’ realizations: The value we put on actual hard work is kinda fucked up. Who defines ‘hard’ and what defines ‘work’? And who’s the lucky duck assigning all this value? Ten minutes of HBO’s Gilded Age might make anyone question that.

1880 New York was WILD. Mothers coercing their crying daughters to marry for wealth and status. Men cheating on their wives, yet only the forced-to-divorce woman is shunned from society. The Have’s and Have Not’s, Old Money vs New Money waging war, the one thing they agree upon: both are infinitely better than no money at all. The actual shit that mattered to the people who built America, this America. Historical fiction, but like…is it?

I couldn’t even properly quit my job and travel the world without paying my dues. I volunteered at dog farms, horse farms, vegetable farms, hobby farms, all the farms, scooping poop and scrubbing chicken coops. It’s hard for me to just BE, without some kind of purpose. I prefer to earn my keep. I’d be that weirdo had I been born into high society New York circa 1900, when it was frowned upon for women even peripherally related to money to work at all. Work? Such a dirty word, most definitely not fit for a lady.

Someone somewhere, at some point, determined my current industry deserved to be decently compensated, exponentially more so than a teacher, I know because I was one. Not a real one, but don’t tell the kids at Milwaukee Riverside first semester class of 2006 that. I went to graduate school to be an educator with a salary ceiling I surpassed within two years at my first employer (obviously not in education). I worked hard, all day every day often spilling into weekends. And I loved it. I worked and worked and worked. But never did I feel as tired as one day of teaching high school. 

It’s funny isn’t it, the value we put on different types of work. If your role doesn’t bring in the dough, you aren’t worth as much. If you’re not contributing to this capitalistic society, stuffing the pockets of those who hold all the cards, make all the rules, the ones defining all this hard work, your value is less. WERK, WERK, WERK, worker bees! Even if you’re one of the most important cogs in the wheel, a wheel that would become real clunky, maybe even stop rolling without you. 

How we can place higher value on people skilled at throwing footballs than the people who educate our children, the people who keep our loved ones alive, take care of our sick, grow our food, and clean up our waste, beats me. Don’t think about it too deeply, it’s kinda gross. And you know, don’t hate the player, hate the game. 

^{More Art!}

But if this is a game, at least I get to pick my team. I don’t need a yacht, a summer home that sits mostly empty, exotic holidays trampled by influencers, fine wines or exclusive dines, fancy cars, diamonds or designer anything. My pièce de résistance is bringing home the bacon so I can give it right back to the offbeat ragtag artists of the world. The pickers, the painters, the creators, the unknowns, not trying to get rich, just offering their craft in exchange for a nibble of this American pie.

The forest creatures who turn trash into treasures, pluck banjos barefoot in the woods, imagine a world of music-loving talking animals. Elves who whittle wood into tools and benches, bend discarded silverware to make mer-people, stick spoons into a broken instrument and voila, a fiddle fish! The neighborhood nuggets who mold polymer clay into ducks wearing hats and backpacks, the queens who combine delicately blown glass with Shrinky Dinks to make exotically unique bracelets. All the hustlers hustlin’. I work for you.

Thank you for making this world sparkle.