"Building a new society within the shell of the old"

I started working for a living when I was 13 years old, after my mother had hysterics when I asked if it would be possible to buy me a couple of items of so I could take part in a sports club. It was made unpleasantly apparent to me, at 13, that if I wanted to do anything that cost any money--and, be it said, nobody in my family had, really any expensive tastes, habits, or goals--I was going to have to earn it myself.

I've worked ever since:

• janitor
• supermarket bag-boy
• sports-complex ID checker
• short-order cook
• drilling rig blowout-preventer mechanic
• circulation-desk librarian
• framing carpenter
• nightclub "doorman" (security)
• bookstore peon and night-manager
• guitar-studio night-manager
• freelance musician
• data-entry technician
• teaching assistant
• academic tutor
• visiting part-time lecturer
• assistant professor
• associate professor
• chair of musicology

I will never forget that I'm a worker, not an owner--even if, by now, I have the luxury that it can be by choice.

And I'm still a member of this organization, and subscribe to its tenets.

"We are building a new society within the shell of the old."