I started babysitting very young, watching children who were only slightly younger than me while their mother worked from home in the next room. At ten years old, I would make them sandwiches and mac and cheese from the box for lunch, go on bike rides with them to the park, yell at the little one (who was also named Emma) when she was being a brat. We would sit on the edges of kiddie pools and talk about whatever it is kids tenandyounger talk about. I wanted to be a good friend and an honest confidant and a good caregiver from the age of ten.
* * *
I have always loved music. I bought my first CD when I was very young (it was Savage Garden, I admit it) and for a long part of my early adolescence music was the only thing I wanted to spend money on. To do that I needed to have money, and so I needed to work.
It's funny, I have no particular memory of my parents telling me I had to get a job, or that they wouldn't buy me things... but I think I always knew that we weren't the most affluent family in the world. I always felt bad asking my parents for money... just felt more comfortable using my own money to buy material non-essentials like CDs and books. Which is where all my money usually went.
Growing up I had several regular families I would babysit for occasionally, generating me enough income for regular trips to the Electric Fetus. I always had to buy two albums. Never just one.
I didn't want to be a full time nanny. It wasn't really a choice that I had. The summer after I graduated college I went to bartending school in the hopes of being a cool bartender or server like my big sister (pretty sure my love of music also came from her... a good 40% of my personality probably comes from me trying to be just like my cool big sister.) In Minneapolis, you can bartend and serve alcohol from age eighteen. Not so in Chicago. So. It was either try to find a waitressing job with no experience and no connections in the city, or use the years of babysitting behind me and some fantastic references from some fantastic parents to find a nannying job.
* * *
Over the past few years my job has evolved quite a bit from mac and cheese and bike rides to the park.
My money does not all go to CDs these days.
I have forgotten. Learning to pay bills and rent and for things like groceries. I budget for all these things and am so thankful that I've been able to be fully independent for these past few years. But while I've been looking for a new job (let's be honest, while I've been watching Netflix marathons and laying on a sheet by the lake in the sun reading / writing / pretending to be finding a job) I've thought of it as a painful painful chore.
But if, instead of thinking of it as something that gets me by, if I start trying to think of finding a new job so that I can buy myself music, books, go on trips to San Fransisco.... I think that that will make it easier. If I can remember the thrill of taking that money that I earned on my very lonesome up to the cute hip older boys at the cash register at Electric Fetus and walking out of there with 12 tracks of pure pleasure, if I can harness that feeling maybe finding work will be a thrill too.
And I will take my first paycheck and buy myself the new Arctic Monkeys album.
Ugh, Alex Turner... I could write an entire blog post about my love for you.
But.
Won't ;)
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