Do you remember your first job? I mean your first real paying job? My

family and myself have always worked as blue collar employees.

Granddads were dairy farmers and sharecroppers, Had great uncles and

aunts as farmers and ranchers. One worked the oil rigs. My dad was an

electrician. His bother worked in the mining industry. I can always

remember the hard work they did to bring goods and services to the cities

in which we lived. So my first job was not really any different. Blue collar to

the bone

I remember early jobs like the family newspaper routes. I come from a

large family, I have 6 brothers and sisters. Im the middle kid. I have two

orders bothers, an older sitter and three younger sisters. Quite a

household So my older brothers each had two paper routes and my older

sister had one as well. Back in the day though you could be 6 and have a

route as long as your Dad or Mom or older sibling really did the heavy

lifting - so I had a route as well as my Dad. We’d all get up every morning

after hundreds of papers had been delivered really early to the house.

Participate in the rolling and rubber banding of them. Putting them in

plastic sacks if it was raining or snowing and stuffing them into the big

carry sacks and loading them into the trucks. For the first part we could

actually still throw them into purples lawns and porches. That was the area

fun of the job. Slinging papers onto porches - my brothers always trying to

hit certain targets. My dad just worried to hit the right house! I remember

summer being great unless it was raining - winter not so much - the heater

inside the car was a really great place to be - 1st job - don’t know much

went into the piggy bank but it was a good learning point - getting up

showing up… and making it fun … yes we had to get up early, we had to

do the had work - but we made it fun - whether that was rubber bands

wars or the action of throwing the papers out of the bed of a moving truck

- fun gave it the value - lessons learned

For most of us 1st really paying jobs are babysitting , washing dishes,

waiter or witness hostess, camp counselors, pizza delivery, fast food

workers, lifeguards, assistants clerks of some sort. I think I may have done

all of those at some point - even babysitting - I had little sisters - Yikes!

My first real paycheck came from a a seed company that would pay

slightly above minimum wage of 3.10 at 3.15 to do a Job called rouging -

Man the thought of making 3.15 an hour as a 15 year old back in the daywas quite something. Heres a snapshot of rouging. You arrive around 5;30

at the seed plant. At the time there was a large group of migrant labor that

would follow the harvest or spring plantings. This company employed

many of those workers. It was 99% hispanic - I was one of two white kids

(perks were great the breakfast burritos were off the hook) So this gourd

would load up in personal vehicles - I and two others road with the boss.

And we went to our assigned fields for the day. Fields were typically a mile

in width (several fields side by side) and anywhere for a quarter of a mile

long to half a mile. Our job to get in the row, walk the length and take our

any rogue plants that were growing along wild the seed crop - if ti was

sorghum - no corn plant, wheat plants, no weeds or vines or heaven forbid

Johnson Grass.. did it out with your shovel - get to the end of the row,

walk to where the alt person was and head back in a new row doing the

same thing. Lots of monotonous work. We made it fun though, learning

Spanish, chunking plants at one another, eating great cultural cuisines -

did I say the breakfast burritos were of the hook? And 3.15 and hour didn’t

hurt

Things change a little as we grow older and become responsible for

paying the bills. Work becomes many times a “have to” or “need to” - and

as things like inflation especially the last two years - we are really working

more for less dollars- it becomes harder to get up in the am to face the

day thats in store for us. We know whats coming, Its harder to show up for

what ever reason, boss, environment, fatigue, or wages themselves. Its

harder to find the fun or even should I dare to say the blessing that comes

in and from work. How do we change that in our lives? How have I

changed that in mine? How do I motivate myself to get up? What does it

take to connately show up? How do we place fun back in the work space.

In the coming weeks Ill share with you some of the things ive learned that

have taken me back to the 1st job days. How ive changed, what ive put

into place and the narrative that I now tell that gets me up, has me

showing up as the driver and has placed fun and blessing back at the

center of work. These things have grown and morphed 9Hearts as well.

And it all stems from how do I quit walking up the down escalator. What

does it take for us to move beyond the Joe Vs the Volcano mentality of

work (check it out - you’ll see what I referencing- underrated Tom hanks

movie) So follow us back and join the journey. Let me hear from you what

your first real paying job and what it was like . I have a short list from

google on the 20 most popular first jobs in our link. Let me know where

you started…