OK. So I’m submitting my first ever vlog as part of #VlogMoms, and it took me a million tries, and I hate my face and the way my voice sounds, and then once I finally got through it the bloody thing is nearly SIX MINUTES LONG. It kills me because I’m pretty good at public speaking… next time I’m filming from a lectern.

Certainly I have zero expectations of you sitting through six minutes of my stilted nonsense, so I’ve written up the general gist below (from what I remember saying; I’m not watching it again). However, I’m going ahead and posting this just so next week I’ll be able to see just how much I improved… seriously, I’ve got no place to go but up.

Hiya. I’m Robin and I’m trying to step out of my comfort zone a little bit, so this is my first submission for the Vlog Moms.

The prompt this week comes from the delightfully adorable Annie Schultz aka Mama Dweeb, and she wants to know about jobs we had in high school or college.

I worked a lot. I worked selling subscriptions for a theater company over the phone– I don’t recommend it– I worked in a comic book store in the mall, I flipped waffle fries briefly at Chick Fil A. I worked at a tuxedo rental place called Smalls Formalwear, I ran the cashier at the Hickory Farms kiosk during Christmas season, and I worked at a camera supply store that catered to professionals.

The best job I ever had was revamping the filing system at an insurance office, the summer between my junior and senior year. This was 1993, so before everything lived on a computer. There was this huge wall of file cabinets, and whenever there was paperwork for an account it kinda just got shoved in the file. So my job was to come in, take each file, separate out the quotes and the policies and the correspondence and the payment slips and the everything else, then arrange them by chronological order, most recent on top, highlight the dates, then hit em with the hole punch and secure them in binders. Then, I got to label them with a label gun and color-coordinated tape.

I worked with one other girl, who was a few years older than me and went to college in one of the Carolinas. It was through her that I learned that people still listen to country music in present day times. Her name was Erin, and she had a very pert nose and perfect teeth and short curly hair and a deep tan and the face of Sarah McLachlan. She looked like the kind of girl who probably went surfing on the weekends, you know? Sunny and athletic and tousled.

Erin and I had a lot of fun. We worked with our shoes off and the radio on. That was the summer that Sheryl Crow exploded on the scene, and every time All I Wanna Do came on she’d make us stop what we were doing to sing along and dance. I still do that when that song comes on the radio.

Erin was the best, most active listener I have ever met. If she was here listening to me right now she would have asked what colors I used with the label gun. When I admitted I worked at Chick-Fil-A she would have mock gasped and been like nooooooo not you!

And when I talked about the girl who made me feel like I was a storyteller, who always made me feel interesting and funny, she would have leaned in and said that she sounded like a fantastic person to know and that I was so lucky to have met her at that lonely and insecure time of my life.

And I was lucky. I think about her all the time. It’s because of her I tell stories. I think about the details she would have asked for, the turns of phrase that would have made her crack up and tell me I was something else.

I don’t have her address or anything so your hate mail will have to continue to come to me. But at least now you know who to blame 🙂

To see much better videos than mine check out the other VlogMoms participants this week: