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worker bees. [kerri’s blog on merely-a-thought monday]

there are large groups of seagulls here – and they congregate in all the normal places – like on the boulders on the shoreline, on the beach, around the trash bins by the beach, out riding lake waves or soaring above the water and scouring for morsels of food. they also congregate in abnormal places – particularly like the kohls parking lot. i used to joke that they were having a conference – all together for the invocation and then splitting off into groups for brief in-service sessions that are, i suppose, for the purpose of whetting their appetites for more knowledge about a topic – 45 minutes or so before they move on to the next mini-topic breakout session.

perhaps today these seagulls are gathered because they are NOT at the conference. instead, they are having a sit-in…just off the shoreline…noisy and stubbornly not moving. it’s their labor day too, they point out.

my first “job” was to go door to door in my neighborhood, dragging a red wagon behind me that was filled with baby cacti in tiny pots. a little later i diversified and added homemade candles. door to door, selling cacti and candles for $1 and keeping a log in my ledger.

at some point i added washerwoman to my paid-job list, as my grown-up sister hired me to do her laundry at the laundromat. my ledger shows that i earned $5 for this domestic task.

according to my meticulous recordkeeping, babysitting rates way-back-in-the-day were anywhere from $2 – $4 an hour, accompanying soloists for solo-ensemble was merely $2.50 or $3, tutoring math was $3.50 an hour. clearly, i was zealous.

i started teaching piano lessons to beginning beginners at age 16 and my mom drove me to the houses where i taught lessons. $3 (and later $4) covered the cost of a piano lesson, which lasted about 30 minutes or maybe a bit more. i have had countless private students through the years, in my own studio or their homes or at the music studio.

i felt productive doing any of my early “self-employed” jobs. that feeling of pride continued when i started working retail at the outdoor recreation/dive center or the music store or the photography shop. i was happy to earn money that i could save or spend on necessities or, maybe, things i was pining over. i liked being a worker bee.

as an adult, i began working for non-profits and government entities – which ranged from educational to religious to legal settings. it became quickly evident that better pay and perks were not necessarily going to be part of the equation. but, when one chooses to work for a non-profit (or an institution that functions under a not-for-profit basis) – though one hopes for ever-improving pay-and-perks – one knows there are limitations, and rewards for your work come in different packages of appreciation and in knowing you are making a difference in the life of an organization, an institution or a community. most of the time i liked being a worker bee in these settings, though there are definitely exceptions.

when i started my independent recording label, responsible for all the ins and outs of the business, my relationship with work took on different parameters. suddenly, everysinglething was within my scope to dream about, decide upon, to initiate, to represent, to carry out. everything that was related – even in small ways – was important to me and respectful relationships mattered: relationships with those i worked with, those who worked for me, those who were in concentric circles with significant adjacent impact on my company and those who were more removed but still had a role to play. i have loved being a worker bee with my own company, despite all the angst, the napkin math and the middle-of-the-night ruminating.

each of us makes choices about how we wish to fit in – what metaphoric spoke-in-the-wheel we wish – or feel comfortable enough – to be. each of those spokes matter in the big picture, no matter how seemingly minuscule or peripheral or menial. we all do this together; recognizing interdependency is paramount to any success.

in these times – fraught with the elimination of jobs, the dismantling of agencies and regulation, the bigoted prevention or stalling of women and people of color to advance, the trad-wife perversion, the mob-like corruption to stoke up money, the xenophobic erasure of immigrants and their very important work, the pronounced caste system of less and more-more-more – we are looking at an administration that does not seem to care about good old-fashioned work and how it should be rewarded.

ahhh. the importance of labor day.

there are some basics, after all, for us worker bees.

where have those gone??

the seagulls – at their sit-in – are clearly pissed.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this MERELY-A-THOUGHT MONDAY

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artists. funambulists. [two artists tuesday]

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between us we have two master’s degrees, two bachelor’s degrees, four businesses, a coaching and consulting practice, various certifications, multiple states of teaching credentials, fifteen albums, four singles, hundreds of paintings, multiple play-scripts, countless productions and concerts and performances and gallery showings, a radio show, four cartoons, books, blogs that contain a few thousand posts, numerous and diverse leadership positions in theatres and churches and educational institutions, too many non-profits to count, long resumes and a combined total of over eighty years of work experience.

we are artists.  and, as you know, that is not the easy path.  it’s gig economy in a corporate environment.  it means piecing things together, working a plethora of jobs at once, purchasing your own healthcare, investing in your own so-called retirement, advocating for your own value, balancing, balancing, balancing.  the tightrope is thin, but anyone doing the tightrope dance (funambulism) is well-acquainted with the balancing pole and standing tall in the center of mass on the rope, necessities in an artist’s life.

in a workplace conversation once, i was asked how i would even speculate about having a second job.  an incredulous moment, as a person who has always had simultaneous multiple jobs, it was ludicrous to me that the person asking this, who apparently has always lived in absolute bullet-pointed stability, could not fathom having more than one job at a time.  were artists to be so lucky.  were any gig workers, in their area of professionalism, to be so lucky.  that is another world entirely.

so we are always on the lookout for additional gigs, so to speak.  education, experience and skills from the wide spectrum of the first paragraph speak well to helping with growth and change processes and insight and honoring students and employees, not to mention the separate and interwoven threads of music, painting, theatre.  these experiences that span decades speak to the arts, that which the world turns to in times of chaos, unrest, dis-ease, periods marked by adjectives like distraught, devastated, frenzied, unprecedented, uncertain, arduous, splintered, divided, distrustful, untrue, exhausted.  the arts – that which feeds society.  yet, “creativity takes courage,” understated henri matisse (painter, 1869-1954).

as many of you, we receive solicited and unsolicited lists of jobs in our email.  we peruse through the obvious ill-fitting options like neurosurgeon or stem cell biological researcher; we look for opportunities to plug our work as artists into the world.  we are also emailed positions that line up with our professional abilities and tenure in the arts.

and this is what we’ve been sent:  sandwich ARTIST and GALLERY advisor.  it’s hard to know whether to laugh or be insulted.  sandwich artist?  if this is really what subway calls their employees, i would say most of us have related experience since the first time, at like age 3, we spread peanut butter and jelly on our wonder bread.  and gallery advisor?  tesla, really?  car dealer concierge maybe?

it’s a dim future if you cannot see relevance for the arts in a society, if they are secondary to anything and everything else, if they present in sandwiches and on dealership floors.  where are the organizations, the institutions, the employers who recognize the multi-faceted diamonds in an artist’s perspective, an artist’s drive, an artist’s commitment, an artist’s vision, an artist’s project-driven dedication and multi-layered stamina, an artist’s sensitivity, an artist’s heart?

as two artist-funambulists, we’d like something better for the gifted artists giving breath to joy and hope and tomorrow.  from the tightrope of this gig economy, it makes our toes curl to think any differently.

read DAVID’S thoughts this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY

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