For me the beginning of 2019 brought a new job in a new industry with new responsibilities.  I am hoping that that this will be my last full-time employer as I am rounding third and heading for home career-wise.

The change has had me thinking about the jobs and careers that I have had during my work-life.  As I was pondering, I came across the pay stub from my very first pay from my very first job.

For me, my work life began early in my senior year of high school at Sherer’s Ice Cream on North Main Street in Dayton, Ohio.  My first week I worked five hours, two hours on Friday and three hours on Saturday.  For my efforts, I was paid, before tax, $6.50 (for those of you that did not pull up the calculator app on your phone, that translates into $1.30 per hour.)  Thirty-eight cents were deducted in taxes leaving me with $6.12 net (somewhere in a baggy in  my basement there is a $1 bill that was part of that $6.12 (Mr. Sherer paid in cash). I do not recall exactly what I did with that first pay, but the odds are that I did go and blow it all in one place – probably on a date to the movies.

Thankfully, my income has increased significantly from $1.30/hr and it does not take an entire paycheck to go to the movies (although the price of a movie has increased several fold since then – but that is a topic for another day).  They say you have to start somewhere and Sherer’s was a good place to start.  Since then I have had a number of jobs – some positive experiences and some negative experiences – some part-time and some full-time – some with good growth potential and some with no potential – some that sounded impressive and some that did not – some that paid well and some that paid $1.30/hr – sometimes more than one job at a time.  

Each job I have ever had has contributed to where I am now and who I am now.  My career path (if I ever really had a career path) has been rather circuitous and not the way I would have planned it, but I survived and it has been an interesting journey that is not over yet.  As the aftermath started to settle from one job involving trying to move to another city that just never panned out, my wife wisely stated, “things worked out pretty well for things not working out very well.”  I think that sums up my career – things have worked out pretty well for things to have not worked out very well.