The gig life is pretty much all I've known. I was looking though some storage boxes the other day and found some Christmas money envelopes/cards from one of my paper routes when I was 13 (Apparently, according to these, I was a good paperboy). I never thought about it this way until now, but (not counting snow shoveling and lawn mowing) paper routes were my first "gig" work. Every Friday I would go door to door to collect the weekly newspaper fee from the customers, then head over to the house where I picked up the papers each day to reconcile their cut. The cash that remained in my pocket was mine. Though I'm not sure I was supposed to, I kept 2 paper routes simultaneously (a South Jersey and a Philly paper). And, conveniently, they reconciled on different days of the week, so I would usually always have cash in my pocket. And that's all I knew: money would dribble in, money would dribble out. Speaking of cash in my pocket, I believe I'd already played my first paid music gig by the time I received the money envelopes in the photo above. Overall, though, it's probably fair to say that the paper routes were my primary source of income until I received my driver's license at 17. Then it was off to the races .... metaphorically, I mean. The gigging life, precarious as it can be, has worked for me. It fits who I am. It allows me to be me. And as I grow old(er), I grow more and more grateful for that.