Commentary: Two things precipitated the remodeling of our shed into an office: children and the gig economy. The shed was already on the property when we bought it but had become more of a refuge for ants, and all my tchotchkes that the sweet mantras of Marie Kondo haven’t torn me away from yet. It’s sturdy, think an oversized Tuff Shed before they were cool, just plopped oddly nearly into the middle of the usable space of the yard.
We knew that with two children of the opposite sex, we’d lose what had been my office, the third bedroom, for one of their rooms someday. It suddenly needed to be an office faster than anticipated because phone interviews are not done at a kitchen table or even behind a closed door in a house with a 3-year-old caterwauling in the background. One interviewee remarked as I apologized, “Oh, I just thought you had angry cats.”
Yes, or a toddler who should be sleeping; it’s pretty similar.
The gig economy came about as I started writing on the side when my eldest was a baby. Having a steady succession of full-time jobs that left me feeling useless certainly helped expand that interest.
But the gig economy gave me a conundrum through the advice from my late father. He would first say, “It’s all about the bennies,” read: the benefits. In most jobs I had, I was well paid for our area, and the jobs were high in all those fun benefits that, according to my dad, I was supposed to have as an adult — paid leave, health insurance, paying into a retirement that may or may not be quite solvent at the end. Over a span of the Great Recession and after, I watched those benefits slowly erode, like when the cost of living increases was eaten up by health insurance premiums rising.
The other phrase my dad liked was, “Are you working to live or living to work?”
That thought made the canary in my mental coal mine sing. It was the things I couldn’t see that were more dangerous. It was being hired and placed in a grey cubicle and not speaking to people for hours. It was jobs with no mission, when I had spent a childhood crafting a vague idea of purpose, with fists clenched around crayons drawing that astronaut, that adventurer, that veterinarian, or that firefighter — all jobs with a mission.
Millennials have been both praised and criticized for the blooming gig economy, but at least adding on an extra gig was more appealing than waiting for the gold watch at the end of a career, to say nothing about the mythical idea of a pension. We wanted more than to be given a participation trophy, and yet, we certainly didn’t anticipate the participation-only jobs.
I think generally those with the "Office Space" jobs under hours of fluorescent lighting and chilling AC know that there is an innate type of privilege of deciding on work to fulfill you instead of simply filling your stomach or those of your family. However, we’ve upgraded from mentally doodling with crayons to shading in the colors more concretely in all career levels, from striking for more rights to bursting through glass ceilings. And with more experience, we’ve become more comfortable with asking, is participation all that was wanted from our generation, or were there actions that we could reach for because we were also told we could do anything we set our mind to?
In cleaning the shed to get it ready for its new purpose as an office, you know what the easiest things were to throw away? All the dusty participation trophies.
Cassie McClure is a writer, wife/Mama/daughter, fan of the Oxford comma, and drinker of tequila. Some of those things relate. She can be contacted at cassie@mcclurepublications.com.