JobSurfer

I was thinking about the stories my boss has told about previous jobs she’d held, most notable as an aerial photographer. It’s how she met her current boyfriend, and from those two things combined she’s learned more about aeronautics than I didn’t know I didn’t know.

It got me to thinking, and cataloging the really cool things that I’ve done. Because if you don’t think back and remind yourself, you forget the places you’ve been and the people you’ve met.

For instance, when I worked at Ibhana I did shows at the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, Canadian Embassy, National Museum for Women in the Arts,  to name a few. I drove to Richmond at 5am on my own, navigated the streets of DC in a U-haul van.

At the National Building Museum, despite the rather shoddy atmosphere and bureaucracy, I still worked in the most beautiful building I’d ever seen. 75-foot Sienese marble columns, gilded arches and columns and porticoes…

When I worked at Grassroots, I met the man who had run Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign, and a number of House members, and I once tried to canvas Scooter Libby for the ACLU.

And now, I’m a keyholder with health insurance, life insurance, dental insurance, and a simple IRA plan.

I’ve met people who spend hundreds of dollars without blinking an eye - on art supplies, on two necklaces they don’t particularly like but will buy anyway because they’re there, on their third wool coat this season… I’ve met people who have an entirely different outlook on money than I do, who have an entirely different outlook on “shopgirls who don’t need to be thanked for climbing a ladder into the backstock because that’s what they’re meant to do.”

Oh yeah, and I’ve got two paintings in a show in NYC.

And I’ve been published like 5 times.

So I guess I have enough stories to fill an afternoon.