I would like to take you back to my 16th birthday. I come from a loving single-parent family where there was a lot of love, but very little money. So when I decided that I wanted to take the bus to Spain, just like my friends, I had to earn the money myself. Even though I had a physical challenge and was in a wheelchair.

My first step toward my very first job was to the employment office in my then home town of Schijndel. The nice lady who spoke to me asked me, “What would you like to do? I myself couldn’t think of much else but a call center job. I also had no problem operating an 06 line. Unfortunately, she didn’t have that kind of job. However, she readily saw the humor in it.

Via-via I ended up at the Bolsius candle factory, where I got the chance to do vacation work. The dream of going to Spain on a bus with my girlfriends for a great vacation was coming closer anyway. I ended up in a team with super nice people. They had figured out that if you stacked a number of pallets at a certain height, you could fill the boxes sitting down. That way I could just work along, without expensive complicated adjustments.

I liked the work very much. I was soon promoted to the department’s joke teller and was known as “Seam for the atmosphere. Now that sounds a bit like a carnival song, but it really was.

After four weeks, the time had come. I had the money together and could take the bus with my girlfriends to the beautiful Spanish town of Salou. It was perhaps my best vacation ever, because I had earned it myself and could just join the group.

I truly believe that this very first work experience contributed positively to my self-esteem and, perhaps, a somewhat traumatized liver. But it also shows that there is always a role that suits you, as long as you grab it yourself.

Read the original piece on the UWV website.