What Do You Do?
“So, What do you do for a living?”
I get asked this occasionally when I’m meeting new people. I’m not always fond of talking about myself. It’s much more interesting to hear about something others are passionate about.
Most of the time I give a partial answer because my full answer is a bit long. I touched on this in my Jury Duty post. I don’t have a 9-5 job strictly speaking. I do a little here and there. I’m a babysitter. I’m an online assistant. I create blog posts and social media content for a real estate photographer. For that same photographer, I’ve learned how to create basic floor plans of home interiors. I’m working on creating novels to publish. As nice as it is to do a variety of things, it’s difficult to condense all of that into a 5 to 10-second answer.
So, I pick and choose based on who I’m talking to. Usually, I talk about being a photography assistant and social media person to folks because if they are interested it leads to a good conversation. If they aren’t it’s easy enough to move past without them feeling like they have to ask a follow-up question.
If I’m with a group of friends of friends and fellow nerds, I give the writing answer. Then I get asked what genre or what I’m working on at the moment. That leads to really fun conversations or complete dismissal of me, it’s about 50/50.
If a person is sneering and condescending while asking me what I do I’ll tell them I’m a professional toddler wrangler and see how long it takes them to translate that to the babysitter. They weren’t going to care what my answer is so they get the one that involves the most poop. Obvious toddler parents get the babysitter answer too, not couched in silly language because I am always looking for advice on how to handle different scenarios.
It was easier to answer the question when I worked for an insurance company. I hated giving that answer though. People tend to equate you with your job and that was a soul-crushing job. While it’s more complicated it’s nice to now be able to discuss all the jobs I like doing instead of ones that make me want to play in freeway traffic.
