When I was around 13 or 14 years old, I had a summer job at the local thoroughbred track selling Häagen-Dazs ice cream bars (I grew up in a horse racing town, where summer jobs operate on a kind of flexible, age-irrelevant, cash-based legality). For six hours a day I sat or stood behind my cart under the shade of a maroon umbrella, hawking overpriced treats to drunks nursing gambling losses. I was paid in personal checks from a man I never met.
I was not much of a writer at that age, but from the time we begin working we cultivate an understanding that our jobs define us.
via On Not Defining Ourselves By What We Are Paid to Do | The Billfold.
