Prologue

I value my free time. I value it more than most things, including money. Almost, it would seem, to a fault. I prefer to work about as much as it takes to get me by, so that I have as much time as possible to read, write, run around town, socialize, make collages, shoot pool, do crossword puzzles, have long telephone conversations, and do a dozen other things that are more fun than working for someone else.
Some people see this as a lack of ambition. They are fools. For me, there would be nothing less ambitious than settling down into a sedentary, long-term situation that is predictable and predestined. I can’t say I’m completely satisfied with the gamble of making rent every month, and of course it’s been years since I’ve had any type of health insurance, but still, if the tradeoff means the level of freedom I have in my day-to-day life, it’s preferable.

I’ve had a pretty wide variety of jobs. I haven’t travelled a straight career path by any means. Partly because I tend to get sick of any one thing after awhile of working at it, and partly because there are so many things I wouldn’t mind doing for a while, I’ve jumped around. None of them have been anything I would want to do on a long-term basis, and some of them I didn’t want to do for nearly as long as I did them. There just isn’t one job out there I really could picture myself doing contentedly for years and years. I’d feel stuck. So, for now, at least, I’m continuing to support myself through a string of unrelated jobs, and the payoff is the outlook this affords me. I have time to find everything hilarious, and time to write about it.

However, my bartending job wasn’t altogether cutting it. I’d managed to get by working one or two nights a week for the past few months, but I came to accept that I’d have to find something else to supplement my income, or else be in some trouble the next time rent and bills were due.

Far from arbitrarily stumbling into dog-walking, it seemed like an ideal solution. I specifically looked for a job walking dogs. My roommate had done it; It wasn’t a 9-5, it wasn’t sitting (or standing) in the same place all day long, it wasn’t dealing with people. Maybe best of all, I’d heard dozens of stories about it from my roommate- stories about the dogs, the weird requests from the owners, the strange, cultish details that inevitably come with such a specific job. It would be funny. The pay would be for shit, but I’d have plenty to write about. Besides, it might be fun to be out with dogs every day, in unfamiliar neighborhoods. I just hoped I wouldn’t have to work on the Upper East Side.