"What Do You Do?" Needs To Retire...

I hate how this question is the first thing people ask upon meeting you. Although you can have fun with it if you have a knack for improvisation, most of us just say the obvious..."I'm a___" and list their profession. The thing is that professions are overrated because nowadays people have to wear many hats in order to pay the bills. Some of us are interested in loads of things so to define ourselves by the way in which we pay the cable bill is like trying to fit an elephant inside a piano. Or a gorilla inside a cello...I'm sure you get my point.  

I love the line in Batman Begins when Rachael says to Bruce, "What you do defines you." Even though, taken literally it disproves my point, I believe that if you think about it in terms of "how many pursuits one is involved in" or "what aspects of life capture one's mind and heart"  then you broaden the potential of actually getting a taste of who someone is. One suggestion is to not ask What do you do? but rather Who are you?

 Not saying that that is an easier question to answer but I think I'd feel refreshed if a stranger asked me that rather than wondering how I get my laundry and gas money.

When you are involved in multiple aspects of the arts, it's impossible to put a name on which art you identify yourself with. If you're a wife, enterpreneur, yoga teacher and graduate student - how you spend your days depends upon which environment surrounds you at the moment. If you work 9-5 at a place in which you despise only to put your kids through college or have health insurance, the last conversation you'd like to get dragged into is one about your job.

If someone asked me Who are you? I would say, "I am a woman who likes to have fun, create, laugh and ponder upon things." To me, that reveals a lot more than saying, "I'm a janitor at a local high school," or "The CEO of a Fortune 500 company." Because really when someone tells me this, you know what I really want to say after they go on a tangent about how their company's numbers were up last year or how much poopoo and peepee they clean up on a daily basis and blah blah blah blah blah...


WHO CARES!