–a journalist. I covered the sports beat two years for my high school newspaper and wrote a strong piece about a hootenany at our school.
–a nursing orderly. My Dad was one and got me a summer job after grade 12 which ran for a couple of years. I had a short (1 day) experience as an orderly in Edmonton at Norwood Auxillary, but quickly realized I was too slight and weak to lift patients around all day.
–a letter carrier. Lots of walking and outdoors on a lot of good days (passing many people’s jealousy tests). But winter and heavy mailbags, plus a lack of challenge nixed this one, though it paid for my last two years of u tuition.
–a disc jockey. I had spun records in my own imagination and created song lists, sometimes entertaining close friends. I also partially dj’d 2 jr. high dances.
–a songwriter/performer. I certainly had a good enough band to start introducing my songs in between 1973 and 1975. I also did demos of my material in the ’80s sent to the likes of Glen Campbell’s manager and Rita McNeill. Jack Richardson who produced The Guess Who liked my “Computer Kid” song back in the ’80s at a songwriter’s conference. (Finally, I realized that teaching would remain my likely day job, that my main 2nd job was as a textbook writer, that I could still do poetry, and still be able to perform music at school events.)
–A high school administrator. My dept. chose me as replacement department head and then I went through the hoops to make it permanent (stopping short of a final interview with the principal whom I didn’t like and didn’t want to slave for). The downtown types really liked me and suggested I go for a senior high admin position, but I turned them down. Admin. was not a job that really interested me. I did not want to be a yes-man in Edmonton Public; I have always had an allegiance to my own integrity and soul.
–A film classifier. For three years in the 2000s, I worked for AB as a film classifier which I would not wanted to continue much longer than that. Most of the films of that time were weak or sheer crap (about 90%); it continued to get worse after that. I also likely did not get hired to continue in the job because I was “too old” (ageism); there was definitely pc-ness creeping into the job hirings.
And so I became a high school teacher, a prominent Canadian textbook author, and leader of various staff bands I put together, as well as a poet, writer, and blogger.