All posts by Brent Seehafer

Do you really hate sleep? How about smelling nice and always having clean clothes? Well, you just might want a baby!

Part of me just wants to skip past all this about a year and the other part hears cute giggle noises. How the hell anyone does this alone is beyond me.

Shit Jobs

So many of the things I’ve learned in my professional career have had very little application in day-to-day life. I’ve known people who can crossover their professional careers into daily life to the point that they’ve made something really useful but I’m just not one of those people. My skills as a graphic designer would do very little in my household except possibly make things more visually organized. At least with enough effort to make my time well spent.

With that, a lot of the things that I learned in supposed “shit jobs,” or the ones you’re doing while waiting to grow up, have given me some really useful skills that made my life easier. As an example, while bartending I learned a really useful way to quickly wash glasses so they don’t need to be dried all that much and dry without spots. You take two baths of water, one soapy and hot and the other very cold. Wash your glass or bottle or whatever in the hot soapy one and then immediately dunk it in the cold one a couple times and set it to drain. It’ll be dry and spot free in at most half the time it would take if you just washed and rinsed in similar temperature water. While this is an incredibly simplistic example of a learned skill, it’s practical. Much more practical (at least for me, especially right now) than being really good with spreadsheets or computer programming.

There are others and they’ve mostly come from jobs I’ve had in my youth. I’ll also add that these jobs do a lot to teach independence while office jobs keep you focused on the task. If your printer breaks in the office, there’s someone else to fix it for you. I can remember a lot of times in restaurant jobs where if something broke there was someone to fix it for you but that person would also teach you how to do it yourself if the time allotted. I think a lot comes from the willingness to learn as well. There were a few managers I had in restaurant jobs who were excellent teachers whether they knew it or not and that was independent from how good of a boss they were.

As much as I might not have liked some of the jobs I’ve had in the past, I certainly remember the good bosses. Those are hard to come by.

Energy to write a real post = 0.

It looks like all this time on front of a computer may have finally taken its toll on my poor eyes. Can’t do too much at a computer for too long without dry eyes and strain. I guess I beat the odds, my parents are both blind as a bat (my mom had glasses as early as two) so I can’t really complain. Of course I’ll have to get thick rimmed hipster glasses cause that’s all there is available now, unless I want to look like Walter White. It’s a little humbling to be made aware of aging but there’s no reason for me to be upset about it. Everything else is working just fine. For now.

Current playlist:

Scissor Sisters – Night Work
Sleigh Bells – Reign of Terror
Kylie Minogue – Aphrodite
Booka Shade – Movements
Glukoza – Izbrannoe
New Order – Republic
808 State – Don Solaris
M83 – Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming
Handsome Boy Modeling School – So…How’s your Girl
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – Baby 81
Crystal Castles – Crystal Castles