I read your blog, would you like a job?

It seems to me there are two ways of looking at employment. The mindset of my parents, 

“If it were fun, it wouldn't be called work,” 

which—though I'm certain in giving me this advice my parents hold my best intentions in mind—is a genuinely awful way to view the world, and contrasts greatly with the second, 

“Do something you love and you'll never have to work a day in your life.”

which I am going to go ahead and agree with, taking the measurable risk of revealing my naive and optimistic nature to all. But seriously...

 There is no need to be miserable 40 hours a week.

Fortunately, finding something to do for that 40 hours in the Vail Valley is easy. An hour ago I opened up the Vail Daily and perused through no fewer 80 job postings, many I am qualified to fill just because I know how to smile and can read, and despite the fact that we are headed into the off season.

Granted, I make no promises about the quality of these jobs. In fact, most are probably awful soul-sucking positions that pay only enough to support an individual from paycheck to paycheck, but they are there, and they are easy to get. Look a little harder (i.e. forget the paper and make some friends…it’s not what you know after all…), and it is possible to find a few real gems: work that doesn't steal your soul, and pays enough money to cover rent, new skiis and Fireball shooters for free outdoor concerts. 

What else do you need? #checkwithmeintenyears

I am certain these gems exist because I was employed in one for the first year I lived here. I worked as a pastry cook and spent most evenings enjoying limited responsibility, minor supervision and completing tasks such as baking cookies, eating crème brulee, and decorating plates with chocolate sauce. I often went home wondering, 

“Am I really getting paid to do this?”

For the hitch-hiking, dumpster diving traveler I was upon arriving in this town, it was a pretty sweet gig.

Unfortunately, in the past two years my enthusiastic attitude has seasoned into “good natured” kitchen bitterness and instead of heading into work early to create new ice-cream flavors, I now put off the clock-in time for as long as possible, even if all I'm doing is lying prone on the locker room floor desperately working up the motivation to put on my chef coat and walk upstairs.

This will not do, I decided. 

I put in my two weeks, at which point I will have plenty of time to research job potential in this town and then post about it on the internets for all you readers (by which I mean, the few friends who actually skim through these entries after they accidentally click on them from my facebook updates).

So you have that to look forward to.

What else am I going to do? Well, follow dreams and stuff writing America's best new cheap paperback novel to sell out of the trunk of my car (actually, I can't afford a car, but just go with the imagery for a moment).

I’ll also be teaching yoga, an equally profitable endeavor.

You're right, Dad, Vail is not the best place to be a starving writer and yoga teacher...

...I know the odds, and don't laugh when you see me pouring your coffee in two months, but I'm going to go ahead and imagine it, some lucrative offer falling into my lap, along with the opening, 

“I read your blog, would you like a job?”