Work & Achievement · A Decembers list
Every job you ever worked, from the first paycheck on
The first one probably paid in cash, folded into an envelope on a Friday. Maybe it was bagging groceries, or a summer at the cannery, or answering a switchboard nobody uses anymore.
This is the list for the whole run of them. One line each, oldest first, and the strange ones count as much as the good.
Free to start. Private from the first word.
Where this list lives
This is a list in Decembers — the place a life gets written down one question at a time.
Decembers asks the questions no one thought to ask, keeps the answers in one permanent Chronicle, and holds them on one Timeline that reads in order. You answer. Decembers does the writing.
- Lists
- A list for every kind of life, and every turn one takes. Pick one and start answering.
- Timeline
- Your answers arrange themselves in order. Seeing a whole life laid out this way is something else.
- Inner Circle
- Not social media. The few people you name are the only ones it is ever shared with.
Begin with one list. The rest follows.
One line is enough
Write down the name of one boss and the whole shift comes back — the time clock, the break room coffee, the guy who trained you and the day you finally knew more than he did.
A resume lists the jobs that looked good. It leaves out the two weeks you lasted at the warehouse, the seasonal work between the real jobs, the side gig you took to cover a bad month. Those are the ones with the stories. The foreman who taught you more than any class did. The coworker who covered for you when you were young and dumb. The trade you picked up that you still use.
Nobody sits down to write the history of their working life, because it sounds like a chore and there's no ending to it. But one job is easy. You remember the smell of the place, what you got paid, who sat next to you. Put that down and the next one surfaces on its own. A line at a time, the whole arc fills in — everything the paperwork never bothered to keep.
How it works
- 01
Pick this list
It’s waiting, already written. There is no blank page to face.
- 02
Fill in what comes
A year, a line, a photograph. Five minutes or an hour.
- 03
Invite who was there
They add what you forgot. You decide what stays.
- 04
Share it, or don’t
One quiet page for your Inner Circle. No link, no feed.
The jobs that end up on this list
The first ones
Before the career, there was the paper route, the babysitting, the summer scooping ice cream or lifeguarding at the pool. The jobs that taught you a dollar is a thing you earn, and that some people will take advantage if you let them.
The ones that didn't last
The job you walked out of at lunch. The one that folded a month after you started. The commission gig that never paid what they promised. These are shorter to tell and often the most honest — you learned exactly what you would and wouldn't put up with.
The one you're known for
The trade, the company, the title that took up the biggest stretch of your years. Where you found your people and learned the work cold. The one your kids answer with when somebody asks what you did.
Decade by decade
- 1950s-60s
- Farm work, soda fountains, and stockroom jobs where you were paid in cash and nobody asked your age.
- 1970s
- Punch clocks, union cards, and the first real paycheck with taxes taken out that you didn't understand.
- 1980s
- The office with the electric typewriter, the plant floor, or the small business you took a chance on.
- 1990s
- The first computer on your desk, the fax machine, and a title that came with a little more responsibility than you wanted.
- 2000s
- The reorganization, the buyout, or the second act you started when the old industry moved on.
- 2010s on
- Consulting, part-time work, or the thing you did after you retired because sitting still didn't suit you.
Other lists you may like
Start with any one of them. Every answer lands on the same Timeline.
Begin
The full run of your working life, one job at a time
Every place that ever put you on a payroll taught you something. Start with the first one — the pay, the boss, the smell of the place — and let the rest come back on their own.