Moving right along…
My first job was as a concessionist at the Evanston Theater during the summer of 1986. I was fifteen years old. My autocorrect doesn’t seem to like the word “concessionist,” but that’s the person who serves you popcorn, candy, and drinks at a movie theater. My best friend worked there, and spending a summer earning money alongside her was the most exciting thing I could imagine. I would come home smelling like the palm oil used to pop the corn and the “butter” we drizzled over it. That butter was a thick, solid oil that came in buckets. Even at a young age, I knew anything that solid couldn’t be good for you—but I served it by the bucketful and ate a fair share myself.
To land that job, I needed a work permit. With two working parents, my Tio Danny was the one who took me to get it. Together, we went to one of those high-rise buildings in downtown Chicago, navigating through a maze of cubicles to find the right office to fill out and file the necessary forms. With that permit, I was ready to work under Illinois law—and I felt grown up. This job was my first step toward becoming an independent woman, someone in charge of her own destiny.
Over the next 40 years, I would hold part-time and full-time jobs. In college, I juggled classes with a work-study job and with lifeguarded during the summers. During graduate school, I kept working part-time, filing photos for a famous underwater photographer, then at a restaurant. I worked, worked, and worked. The only time I was officially unemployed was in 1999, waiting for a federal government contract to be renewed. Those six months felt endless. I hated the feeling of dependence on my then-husband, scraping by on his small paycheck and my dwindling savings. Still, there was a silver lining—I finished and defended my master’s thesis in Marine Science during that time.
Today, I am not technically unemployed; I am on sabbatical from my job in Seattle. Yet, it feels like a strange kind of unemployment. This sabbatical is a chance to focus on my writing, to build an audience, and—hopefully—to monetize my work. That’s part of why I started my Substack: to document this journey towards becoming a full-time writer.
Since my last post, I’ve packed my life in Seattle into two Relocubes (those portable storage pods), boarded a plane with my cat, and flown with my husband to Oahu. I’ve jokingly started calling this the most expensive and complicated writing retreat ever. But it’s more than that—it’s about recognizing that place matters when you’re writing. Where you live shapes how you create. The climate, culture, food, and people around you all influence the stories you tell.
In the week since I arrived on the island, I’ve already felt a deep sense of support for my writing. There’s no overwhelming pressure to write, though I’m working on establishing a routine—or, as I prefer to call it, a structure. I’ve realized over the years that I thrive on structure. Ask anyone I’ve worked with, and they’ll tell you I’m one of the most organized people they know. Yet, the unstructured moments of this move—the chaos that creeps in during transitions—have been the most stressful. I can’t even count the number of panic attacks I’ve managed to breathe through or the times I walked around Green Lake just to calm my nerves.
Now, as I settle into this new chapter in Oahu, I realize that every job, every move, and every challenge has brought me here—to a place where I can finally focus on what I truly want to do. It’s not just about building a writing career; it’s about honoring the journey that began when I was a fifteen-year-old serving popcorn. Back then, I dreamed of independence. Today, I’m rediscovering it, not through a paycheck, but by creating the life I’ve always wanted, one word at a time.
Rebecca Francesca Reuter Puerto 
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