work, work, work...

i've worked all my life, it's really all i know how to do.

at ten years old i was, for the first time, paid for my labor. my cousin, grant, and i were contracted by my mother to pull weeds in the greenhouse for 3 dollars an hour, and glad to get it. for five hours we pulled weeds from the pea gravel coated, fire ant infested, black texas clay; our hands were cut up from johnson grass, covered in ant bites, and blistered from stubborn crab grass, but at the end of the day we each had $15 and three more greenhouses to weed. that day i learned to never work for family...

at sixteen, equipped with my own transportation, i got my first real job. oh, i'd done odd jobs for neighbors and work plenty of gigs for dad, but this was a real job with real work, a real boss and real pay. for $6 an hour, 40 hours a week, for three months i worked steel construction. unfortunately, the summer of 1997 we had nearly 100 consecutive days of triple digit heat and it only rained once... on my day off. my boss was a great guy, the now late ronnie wren, but he was never there, so i was at the mercy of brett the gang boss. i learned how to out work grown men, to out think a boss who doesn't give you quite enough information, and how to treat a welders burn to the eyes.

through college i went to work the family biz: working show floors, loading trucks, driving trucks, unloading trucks, setting shows, reloading trucks, driving trucks and re-unloading trucks. the show and destination might change, but the M.O. was pretty much the same, some gigs were fun, some were just work. i learned how to work a show, work to a deadline, deal with the client, to bribe the dock master, and always take care of your crew.

the work i do now is not all that different from the work i've always done. it's usually cleaner and it pays a little better, but the lessons i've learned along the way still play into it. ultimately, this work i more rewarding to me because it's my work, what i love and that allows me to invest more into it than i would at a different job.

maybe that's just the way it works, maybe not but i feel fortunate. my dad always said, "you can't call it work unless you'd rather be doing something else," but i say "do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life."