Reflecting on My Past Work

I have a tradition where every summer I consider what I want to do the following academic year. Do I want to keep working as a consultant and part-time college instructor? Or do I want to dig into something else? These questions start to take on more meaning as I can see my professional finish line slowly approaching. The question really becomes- What do I want to do in my final chapter (or chapter and epilogue) as a professional?

Recently I did an exercise where I reviewed all of the jobs I’ve done. I wrote out the things I enjoyed about each and the things I didn’t like so much. And as I was working on this reflection I realized that I had not included my earliest jobs…the jobs that I guess my brain didn’t consider “professional”. Once I included these jobs in my reflective exercise I realized that one of my favorite jobs- a role that brought me great joy- may have been my very first job.

The Summer of 1988

Heading into the summer of 1988 I applied for several fast food jobs. This was the summer before I would head off to college- my last summer in my hometown. I had no fast food experience and I was struggling to get in the door. I was starting to get a bit of a complex that I couldn’t even get a job in the fast food industry when I heard of an opening at a music store. This definitely perked my interest and I applied. Somehow- with no retail experience but armed with a love of music- I got a job at DJ’s Tape Town in the Triangle Mall in Longview, Washington.

WARNING: “Back in My Day” Explaining Ahead

So let’s do a quick history lesson. During the summer of 1988 there were no cell phones. No internet. No Spotify or Apple Music- no streaming or downloading of music. We listened to music on the radio and on MTV and we purchased hardcopies of music mostly on cassette tapes and also on an emerging technology called compact discs. LPs were in very limited production at this time. Most new cars at the time were equipped with cassette players and this was still a somewhat new technology and represented the first time that we could play what we wanted in our cars and were not just limited to radio.

So given the context of the technology, music stores were places where people shopped for music but also discovered music. A music store might be the place where you heard other tracks on an album besides the singles on the radio or where you discovered an album or artist that didn’t get much play on the radio or MTV. Music stores felt like sacred places to me. I could easily spend an hour in a music store just searching and talking to the salespeople- trying to find something great that I didn’t even know existed.

So when I got hired at DJ’s Tape Town I felt like I had hit the jackpot. What a perfect summer job!

The Best Job I Ever Had?

At DJ’s Tape Town I got paid real money to stock cassettes and CDs. I got paid to see and hear the latest and greatest music as soon as it was released. I got paid money to talk to people about music. I got paid money to make choices about what music to play over the speaker system. I got paid to set up displays and merchandise the tapes and CDs. It was like hanging out in a music store (something I already loved) and magically getting a paycheck every two weeks.

Growing up in the 70s and 80s I had a music education that reached back to the 1950s. I grew up surrounded by my parents’ record collections. So as much as I was raised in real time on radio by a diversity of artists like the Bee Gees, and Michael Jackson, and the Eagles. I was also raised through LPs and 45s by Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Simon and Garfunkel, and the Beach Boys. I loved when someone would come into DJ’s Tape Town looking for some “oldies” music and leave pleasantly surprised by what the kid with the permed mullet knew about Chuck Berry.

Finding the Joy in Our Work

I have nothing but joyful memories about that summer job at DJs Tape Town. It’s entirely possible that the decades of time have worn and eroded away any rough edges on those memories to leave behind a shiny smooth experience that doesn’t reflect the reality. But I don’t think so- that job truly filled me up.

So what was it about that job that brought me joy? What are some lessons or big ideas I can take away from that summer job? Here are some of the things that I think about:

• I had expertise…and that expertise was valued.
• My expertise didn’t come from training or a degree- It came from my own lived experiences and something I deeply care about.
• I helped other people find things that brought them joy.
• I got to help people discover new things.
• I got to learn about new things and add to my expertise in authentic and meaningful ways.
• My expertise and my joy were aligned.
• I got to work with others who shared similar interests.
• I could be myself and experience a sense of belonging– my long hair and style wasn’t always welcome in other places of work.

One Last Thing

I’m very aware that this is a privileged idea- this notion that a job should or might be a things that fills me with joy. Many of us do not find our true joy in our everyday work…we find our joy in our time outside of work with family, hobbies, arts, etc. I was recently watching a video where Rick Rubin (music producer, artist) was talking about creativity and joy and he shared that for many of us our work may not be our source of joy and our outlet for our creativity. Our job might just be a job and a means for making a living so that we can find that joy outside of work. But it is imperative that we find that joy in something.

So during this reflection and planning for my future work I’m really wondering- do I I need to reframe my current work? I don’t dislike the constellation of things I get to do in my current roles- I have those cool moments of connection and understanding when teaching my college students where I feel a sense of joy. Or when I observe a rookie teacher in the classroom for the final time and see them excelling- that is always a joyful experience. But I’m not sure it fills me up on the same scale that my summer job of 1988 did. Do I just need to be happy and fulfilled with what I’m doing? Or do I need to see if might be lucky enough to reconnect with that elusive feeling of truly joyful work that I stumbled on way back in the summer of 1988?