Sunday, Feb. 22, 2004 - 10:18 p.m.

Great Jorb

I don’t update this diary nearly often enough to keep up with all the developments in my life. What I’ve been neglecting to mention is that I got a job. Sort of. This fact made it a lot easier to turn down the 5 grand I would have gotten from the drug study.

A few weeks ago, just two days after I got invited to the drug study, I went into an office to try to talk the manager into accepting the Liberty Dollar as payment. The guy signed up, and while doing so remarked about how he was in the process of packing up his concession stand because he couldn’t find anyone to run it.

Stop the presses, I thought, and offered to run it for him. He agreed, and showed me how to make the store’s specialty, bubble tea. I thought at first that he wanted me as an employee, but no, he wants me to run the business as my own, and take home half of the gross income. Which means that if the store does poorly, I will still be broke, but if it does well, I could make $20/hour or more. I have high hopes, because the store is in an area with heavy foot traffic.

And this guy, an aging hippie Libertarian, who says he is called The Professor, is fine with me simultaneously using the store to hawk the Liberty Dollar. I can even put Liberty Dollars in the lighted glass-enclosed display counter. Now I can directly take funny money as payment and give it out as change to willing customers.

A few days before, I had made up this list of characteristics of my dream job. Upon getting the tea job offer, I stopped looking for other jobs, since this meets most of my criteria, and in time might meet all of them.

Politically meaningful

10-20 hours per week

$20/hour

uses computers

some nature/ plants/ trees/ sunshine

some standing up

some helping/ teaching

perks-a-plenty

lots of fun

very easy

speed of work is irrelevant

gives me energy

feels like time well-spent

entirely ethical

no push selling

room for creativity

uses my intelligence without relying on it

fun, irreverent, and kind coworkers

mix of solitary and group work

time to let my mind wander

time to read my books

appreciation

respect

support

easy to schedule vacations

no problem if I call in sick

non toxic

short commute

I’m remembering that the only long-term paid work I’ve done that I really enjoyed was working for Hollywood Video. I’m hoping that serving tea will make me happy in the same way, but without the chagrin of working for a large corporation, and with better pay, and more of a future.

I opened the store on Friday. I only had two customers: some anarchist friends I had invited the night before. They split a bubble tea. Now I just need to get more people into the store.

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