At a social function recently I was asked: “What do you do?” Instead of choking and then uttering a garbled response, I said simply: “I’m a writer.”
What I wanted to say was: “I’m a wife, mother of three small children, and oh, we just got some kittens so technically, we are now a family of seven and when I say writer, I mean I’m trying to be and I am working freelance. I’ve just finished a revision booklet for some students and I am doing some consultancy work in a couple of weeks and I’m really using tonight’s event to come up with some topics to write on and then pitch to magazines, and I’m really nervous because I HATE being in a room full of relative strangers.”
It’s probably just as well I avoided mentioning all of the above and stayed focused, because as it was, the follow up to my single line sentence was positive and not awkward at all. Which it would have been had I said all of this to a stranger.
It’s funny isn’t it the disparity between what we say and what we want to say? I have a friend who has endured countless rounds of IVF and two miscarriages. When people ask her that questions, her response is: “I’m a lawyer.”
In actual fact, she wants to say: “I’m a human pincushion actually, and my husband dragged me here tonight because he says he doesn’t want us to become ‘that couple,’ the ones who never go out, but I just want to be at home pouring over my tracking charts seeing if my temperature is doing what it should, but here I am and I can’t even have a drink because you know I might be….and if I am then I don’t want to damage it and if I’m not then it sucks…”
And then there are the times we are ashamed to say who we are or what we do as if it might devalue us in the eyes of others. Why isn’t it okay to say: “I am a student” or “I do night fill at a supermarket.”
An old school friend, now a high flying media strategist wrote in “The Punch” last year: “I have four children. That’s not an easy thing for me to admit in public….it brings with it an expectation from people how I should be/have that I don’t always live up to…” She is now living across the country from her children launching her business, and I am sure it is incredibly hard on her and her family. But the thing is, if it was a man I wouldn’t have blinked at hearing that.
It’s interesting how our perceptions are altered based on gender too, isn’t it?
So here is my question because I am insatiably curious, and want to know. When people ask you “What do you do?” what do you say in response? But, more importantly, what would you actually like to say?
