A Part-time Job With Inspiration On The Side

I am now a part-time seasonal employee at a small, upscale home and garden store and I must say, it ain’t a bad gig. My boss and co-workers are easy-going and friendly. During each four or five hour shift I am surrounded by beautiful, high-quality home décor and patio furniture. Of course I can’t afford to own any of it, but I enjoy it for what and where it is and keep my credit card at home in the freezer. And then there’s the most exciting benefit of all: the customers. I admit that when the reality of my need to get some part-time work hit me, I went into mourning. I long to spend my days with my laptop, creating the next great American middle-grade historical novel and not worrying about paying for groceries. Now that I have this job, however, I’m no longer in mourning—I’m inspired.

I have found at my new job that the sweet, demanding, quirky customers provide—free of charge—the humor and substance I need for the characters in my current manuscript and manuscripts yet to come. In a mere two weeks I have found a goldmine in the rich old ladies who march into the store wearing matted lipstick (mostly in a shade of orange), declaring exactly what they are looking for as if they were up half the night planning their attack, I mean, purchase. Then, there are the 30-something year old women who stroll into the store sporting name brand tennis garb and blonde highlights. On a whim they buy expensive exotic plants as gifts for girlfriends and garden do-dads they don’t need for their yard. The customers I like the best, though, are the ones who surprise me. Like the biker-dude I waited on today. He sauntered over to the register with his bulging muscles, black boots, tight blue jeans embellished with leather, hair greased back with a slight indention from his helmet and a creepy tattoo on his forearm. He plopped his purchase on the counter: Two boxes of decorative snowball lights, two bags of potpourri and some scented oil to keep it smelling good. (He hates it when potpourri loses its scent. He actually told me that.) The biker-dude was surprisingly endearing—in a Hell’s Angel sort of way. I think I may give him his own chapter someday.

Ahhhh, inspiration!