What Do You Do?

Answering this question is one of the most frustrating parts of adulting (aside from–you know–paying bills, washing and folding laundry, making sure you have clean dishes, grocery shopping, and figuring out what to eat every night for dinner until you’re dead). Instead of answering, “I scream at my teenagers, knit soft prosthetics for breast cancer survivors (it’s a real thing!), and stare into the void, waiting for it to physically manifest,” the first instinct is always to spit out your job title or where you work, an answer which doesn’t precisely answer the question, though instinctively you know that’s what the asker is after.

I’ll admit I used to do this–define myself by what I did for eight hours a day/forty hours a week. Of course that’s what I did! I loved my job! My work was IMPORTANT!

Then I was unemployed and I didn’t know how I should answer. I usually said, “I’m not working right now,” which wasn’t exactly true. I was working! I was writing nearly every day and making good progress. I never got brave enough to say, “I’m a writer,” partly because I didn’t think I qualified (hello, imposter syndrome!), and I dreaded the follow up question: “What do you write?” Because then I’d have to engage in a discussion about how I’d started a lot of things and never finished anything, a fact I was not particularly proud of.

Then I finished Whatever Will Be and I had an answer. I’m a novelist, and being an unemployed novelist gave me time and permission to reframe my thinking around what I do. I promised myself when I was once again gainfully employed, I would forever answer that question, “I’m a novelist,” and if absolutely necessary, follow it, “with a day job.”

About that day job: I really enjoy it. I’ll probably always need to have a day job–I have no delusions about how hard it is to make a living writing fiction–and I’m grateful for mine. My organization does important work that needs doing, and I get to be a part of that. I meet great people. I might never love it like I did my old job, but I like it very much and that’s a start. I’ve been honest with my manager and coworkers that my job is just a day job, and I’m lucky that I get to leave every day, totally unplug from my work there, and come home to do what I consider my real work. And though no one’s asked me in a great while, when they do I’m prepared with an answer, though I might also add: “I scream at my teenagers, crochet (not the prosthetics for breast cancer survivors, but maybe someday) while watching old episodes of ER, and stare into the void, hoping to God it never physically manifests.”

I hope you also have a satisfying answer to what I still consider to be a rather lame question. I hope you do what makes you happy, even if you don’t get paid for it.

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This post was finished a little later than I wanted it to be; I’ve been having some mental health struggles and y’all know that shit is real and no joke. I’m taking care of it.

I didn’t want to dwell on it here, because I don’t want this blog to be about that, and Jenny Lawson does it much better than I ever could over at The Bloggess, and is absolutely hilarious while doing it. Go over there and check it out. Her books are pretty great, too.