Kiosk inspector. Advertising distributor in rich neighborhoods. Caregiver of an elderly woman in her neighborhood. Real estate brochure translator. Receptionist of tourist accommodation facilities. Camera operator at a funeral. Director of a poetry festival. Assistant on tour Boney M. in Andalusia. Columnist. His girlfriend’s secretary. “I feel like I’ve been selling smoke since I stepped outside my house,” says Violeta Niebla (Rum raisin44 years old), whose professional career took paths that not even she herself suspected when, at the age of 18, her mother told her it was time to go to work. His working life is precisely the origin of Everything I did for money (Blackie Books). It’s a novel that tells his truth, some lies and it has a constant, precariousnessa thread that unites all the works that appear in his CV and those of many others like his. “Anyone of my generation could write a book like that.”, he assures.
With a smurf mixed drink and a coffee on the table of the Flor bar, in the Malagueta neighborhood of La Malagueta, the author says she typed the first pages during confinement. They were born from a writing workshop online with Sabina Urraca. “I wrote three stories and I realized that they all had to do with the world of work. I had had a lot of fun and, since we still couldn’t leave the house, I decided to make more”, he recalls. He sacrificed his working life to stay in line. And he soon realized that what was in front of him could be an index. Furthermore, he saw that there were empty periods in which he had worked, but these did not appear because he had done so without a contract. “I used my memory. I became obsessed with filling in those gaps and started writing,” he adds.
He did it sometimes for three years in Málaga, but also in Belmonte de San José —awarded by La Casa Belmonte— and in mini writing residencies —with the support of the Ministry of Culture— in Los Guájares, Quesada, Sierra de Yeguas, El Borge —thanks to The Pueblo Project— or Lucerne, where he finished the work in a friend’s apartment in late 2023. There, 15 minutes after sending it to Blackie Books, the publisher received a call Jorge de Cascante. He didn’t need to move it for other editorials. It was published on October 15th. It is his first work of fiction after having published two works of poetry:You won’t be my baby AND Buy gold– and a photographic book, entitled I am the source.
The book, published last October 15, is a professional anecdote full of irony, terror, humor and identity. What she did for money constitutes a unique career that has led her to live a thousand different experiences since she started working in Toys’R’Us thanks to his uncle, manager of the Malaga plant. From there his path branches out to places as diverse as appearing in a television series —Arrayán, of the Canal Sur— or cleaning hotel rooms in Ireland, doing public relations for bars, teaching English and teaching Spanish, curating exhibitions on level -1 of a municipal car park, attending a grape harvest, writing tweets, speeches and Instagram replies for a Malaga councillor, or organizing crazy galas for the Malaga Fantastic Film Festival. Jobs with or without a contract in which the salary was never what he wanted: sometimes in exchange for his effort he only received a sandwich. Or not even that.
Beyond this, work is a reflection of what everyone is and ceases to be simply by accepting a certain job. How much does it define people to carry out this or that job in the eyes of themselves or others when faced with the classic question of what one does. And of the many ways there are to talk about what you do (or don’t do) during the working day and your relationship with the rest of the staff. “After being in Ireland to clean roomsI said that I had been there as a receptionist, that I had traveled a lot and that everything was wonderful. Today, as the years go by, telling the truth is much easier and you even feel proud of having done things without my rings falling off,” explains the writer as she finishes her sandwich. Naturally, in the pages of Everything I did for money He keeps inventing to add some myth to his reality. “Who hasn’t forged or, at least, adapted their resume?” he asks.
“I don’t know how to say no”
Even though it may not seem like it, In this autofiction the author draws much more from memory what about imagination. It barely crosses the characters from one job to another, enriches the contexts and dilates the situations until they become distorted and removed from reality. That’s why the question always arises whether their experiences are true, farce, or a little of everything. That’s exactly what he did when, at age 10, he wrote a diary that he embellished with fictitious situations in case his mother confiscated it. “I like my life to be interesting and even then I pretended to be interesting, even if it was a lie,” he says. So much so that at that age she went to live with her family in Córdoba and told her friends that she had moved to study veterinary medicine. “Wow,” he exclaims amid laughter. Now, even if their names do not appear, he fears every day the call from one of the colleagues or bosses he has had in his professional life, in case they take the words of the book wrong or believe the whole story at face value.
The review of his work life also helped him realize that he still does not have a clear calling, that he continues to doubt what his purpose is or whether it exists. It is another point in common with a good part of her generation, but there is another shared symptom: many times she was the one who left her job. “I don’t aspire to always do the same thing because I get very bored,” he says emphatically, who at least knows he wants an office in an institute or a fixed working day. He prefers freedom, but knows that, in exchange, “every month he gets the pain in his stomach when he pays the fee for self-employment”, recognizes those who still can’t say what their profession is exactly because there are so many at the same time.
Writer, photographer and cultural manager, he directs the poetry festival Gli Irreconciliabili with Ángelo Nestorehe’s putting together another book based on thousands of secrets he’s been collecting for more than 10 years, he plans performance clandestine, he holds a writing workshop and leads two reading clubs. Among other tasks, he also deals with bureaucracy and the justification of aid for the productions he creates with his partner, the artist Alessandra García, with whom he founded Dos Bengalas and with whom, among many other things, he is united by an almost unhealthy passion for work. In the meantime, he continues to respond with the thumbs up to almost every proposal that comes his way in order to pay taxes, expenses and quarterly VAT. “I still don’t know when the time will come to accept a couple of jobs and be able to refuse the rest”, sighs those who, at least, can continue to collect anecdotes in case they want to expand their novel in future editions.
