Page 40 of Slanting Towards the Sea
THIRTY-SEVEN
A COUPLE OF DAYS later, Marina texts me that a friend of hers, an owner of a small restaurant-type venue downtown that offers cooking classes to tourists, will give me a call. My phone rings before I can ask Marina what her friend could possibly want with me.
The woman tells me she and Marina have been collaborating for a long time, sending tourists each other’s way.
They were having drinks yesterday, and Marina mentioned to her that I’m trained for sensory analysis of olive oils, which makes me an olive oil sommelier of sorts.
There’s been a lot of interest among tourists about locally sourced food, she says, especially the health benefits of olive oil, and she would love to have me teach in one of her classes, or even better, I could do a class on pairing food and oils of different olive varieties.
I would need to be able to issue her an invoice for my services, though, and I could handle that as a side gig or do as she did, start my own sole proprietorship, if this is something I’d like to be doing in the long run.
She’s heard that the European Union and the government are offering aid to people who want to become self-employed.
If I make a business plan and attach her offer of collaboration, she’s sure I’d qualify.
I tell her I’ll think about it and get back to her shortly.
When we hang up, I almost laugh, even though I’m in the middle of a crowded street.
Is it possible that I could make money by educating people on the benefits and taste of olive oil?
I think back to my junior year in high school, when my mom took me to a professional orientation assessment.
The lady there droned on about the importance of choosing an occupation that was “sustainable in the long run.” She was so emphatic about “steady,” “corporate,” and “safe income” careers.
I have done exactly what she told me to, and here I am, decades later, selling stationery.
And all this time, I waited for the world to right itself. For the future that had been promised to me to reappear. I haven’t been able to accept that the times had shifted by the time I graduated. That the future I once implicitly believed in is now locked in permafrost, gone.
But what if the times have changed again, this time for the better?
There are so many people who earn money in ways that weren’t imaginable before.
Influencers, coaches, virtual assistants.
People turning their passions into the weirdest jobs, like foraging or teaching Dalmatian cuisine to tourists.
People who’ve not only exited the box, but punched holes in it and now wear it as a fashion detail.
It fills me with a new kind of zeal, this thought, that I might become one of them.