Selling My Time

I wake at 6:02. Outside my window, I see my garden. The leaves of the plum tree seem cemented in place. No wind will relieve the scorcher of the day to come.

I've just finished Risen's Red Scare and will start Man and Boy by Tony Parsons written in 1999. I found the book in a red telephone booth kiosk among all the French books in Collonge, Switzerland

My dog and husband are nestled together still asleep. I'm looking forward to the day. I have two blogs to write. My day to cook. Left over chicken made into salad means not having to turn on the stove or stove top. 

My head is full of words and I want to write two blogs (this is one) and work on my novella Sugar and Spice.

As a retiree I benefit from my pensions and no longer have to add working for someone else to my daily chores. No more planning my writing on my way to work to wait for after dinner to get them into my computer.

I sold my time for financial security. I also kept my wants simple compared to most while purchasing the things I loved and needed. I provided for my daughter.

In many ways I was lucky in my work outside what I wanted to do most – write. My father was a successful salesman for Snap-on-Tools. My mother had several businesses: She started a doll-making cottage industry and later ran a woman’s clothing business on a Tupperware-house party plan before becoming a journalist. Both of them reveled in their work. A friend used to say before leaving for her college teaching job, “Off to stamp out ignorance.”

I reveled in my education. I studied literature and history and thought of teaching. Instead I had many positions around writing: journalist, marketing and public relations. I didn’t want to climb any corporate ladder that would take me away from this type of creative activity.

With the exception of one marketing job for a stamp company which had a toxic atmosphere to a point that I started dreading Monday Thursday night, I enjoyed my work. When I quit that job, I blessed my mother for making me learn to type. I could sell my time to temp agencies until I found work I wanted.

I was also lucky that I didn’t have to work for corporations that did harm: no cigarettes, pesticides type places. I fell into credit union marketing/PR without realizing they were co-operatives until I later started my own credit union news service for Canadian credit union executives. Credit unions provide for their members in a way that banks will never help their clients.

My father and grandmother both considered saving next to godliness but not at the sacrifice of living today. The same way I didn’t want to work for a company that wasn’t ethical, I preferred to put my savings into bricks not stocks.

I think I made good investments in selling my time where it benefited me, benefited the company I sold it to.