It wasn’t bad advice, because teachers certainly don’t get paid what they should, and back then we made even less. I had no intention of looking for a summer job, though. In my mind, summer jobs were for high school kids, not educated professionals. Back then my tendency for thinking I had everything figured out was dangerously magnified by several powers of ten (I was in my 20s, after all) so I listened to his advice and answered him in a manner that I’m sure came across more dismissively than I’d intended.
“Don’t worry, Dad. I’ve got it figured out. I’m going to teach during the school year and write books in the summer.”
Surprisingly enough, he didn’t see my coupling one source of income that had no guarantees to it with a second source that was little more than a fantasy as a solid plan for the future. But this was me, so I had it all figured out.
Years earlier, before I was even in high school, he had given me an opportunity to make some money at the drugstore he was managing. It wasn’t going to be a lot, really just a supplement to my allowance, but it was money. There was a small lot out behind the store that, even though it was parked right in the middle of a suburban downtown area, had gone wild with all manner of weeds, several of which were thick as saplings and waist high on me. I was to be paid by the hour for however long it took to get the job done, which I thought was great. I was excited for the chance to make some money, but even more excited because I had a brilliant scheme: The owner of the store figured the job would only take two or three hours, but I figured I could get even more money out of him if I worked slowly and made the job take longer. I shared this plan with my dad, thinking he’d appreciate my clever plan in a moment of “let’s stick it to the boss man” solidarity, but instead he was disappointed. And disappointing him was always worse than making him angry.
He told me that wasn’t how it worked. “If you don’t show up to a job ready to work hard, nobody will want to hire you,” he said. “And if they do hire you but find out that you aren’t taking the job seriously, they’ll let you go.”
Since this was advice coming from not only my father but from the guy who was involved in managing a number of different stores, his words got past my Know-It-All barrier. Now, I’m not going to open up a can of revisionist history here and paint myself as someone who learned the value of hard work that very day and did all I could to live up to that expectation. But the seed had been planted. As I started getting jobs for real, the seed grew a little more. Once I started teaching, it took off like it had been saturated with Miracle-Gro. By the time I had worked my confidence up to try writing an actual book instead of just a bunch of short stories, it was flourishing. And nobody who ever tries to write a book is going to reach that goal without being ready to put in a lot of hard work.
So now when I draft a manuscript, and then spend weeks or months rewriting it, and then put in nine-hour stretches to edit it several times over, and remind myself to be patient while I wait for feedback from my agent, and hope for the day to come when we make a sale, I know I can do these things because I’ve reached the point where it’s a job now. And Rule #1 about having a job is showing up and getting the work done.
So Dad, maybe it didn’t happen as quickly as my twenty-something self had thought it would, but I got there: teaching during the school year and writing books in the summer…although it turns out there’s a lot of writing that has to get done during the school year as well. But that’s okay. Because I’ve learned, from a lifetime of your example and expectations, that if I want to be taken seriously at a job, I’d better be ready to put in the work. That ethic will always have more to do with any achievements or successes I have than anything else.
Thanks for that. And Happy Father's Day.
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