In today’s reflection, I want to talk about a question you have been asked a hundred times, and probably asked other people just as often.
So, what do you do?
It is friendly. Nobody means anything by it. And for most of last year, I dreaded it.
Over a year and a half ago I lost my job. Finding another one in marketing turned out to be the hardest thing I have ever done. These are not easy times to be looking, and I want to be honest about that, because I know some of you reading this are in it right now.
So when someone at a dinner or a networking event turned to me, perfectly kindly, and asked what I do, I felt it drop. Like a bomb.
What the question actually does
It asks you for a category. And once someone has your category, the next question writes itself. Oh, you are in marketing, which company? Oh, you are a teacher, which subject?
If your category still fits you, that is fine. You answer, they follow the script, everyone is comfortable.
But if you have lost yours, or outgrown it, you have three options and all of them are bad.
You give the old answer. The job you do not have anymore. And you feel yourself doing it.
Or you tell the truth. I am looking. I am between things. I am figuring it out. And you watch their face do that small recalculation, and then comes the question you were dreading. So what is the plan? And you do not have one, because if you had a plan you would not be in the messy middle. You would be past it.
Or you give the rehearsed answer. Everybody in this situation has one. You wrote it in the car on the way there. Mine was terrible for months.
The part nobody talks about
Here is what that question costs, and I do not think most people see it.
People in the middle of a change stop going to things.
I did. There were events I should have gone to and I did not go. It was not because I was ashamed. It was because I was exhausted from performing a summary of myself that was not true yet. It is easier to stay home than to explain eleven times in one evening a life you are still building.
But those were exactly the rooms where the next thing was going to come from.
So the question does not just make people uncomfortable. It removes them. It takes the person who most needs to be around others, and it keeps them home.
That is what I mean by trapped. Every time you answer with the old label, you rehearse the old life one more time.
Three things I would like you to take from this
Ask about a decision, not a category. I have been in São Miguel for two weeks and I have been meeting people every day.
Alex is an expedition guide. She works on ships that go to the most extreme parts of the world. We walked one of the most beautiful trails on this island together, and by the end she had said yes to coming on the podcast.
Gareth is a mountain guide. He spends his working life on mountains, and here he is on his holiday, walking up more mountains. For fun.
If I had opened those conversations with what do you do, I would have three job titles. Guide, guide. Two labels. No people.
Instead I asked how come they chose the Azores, and I got three lives.
A category is something you were given. A decision is something you made. You thought about it, you probably defended it to someone, you maybe saved up for it. It is yours, and you are a little proud of it.
Nobody has a rehearsed answer for how come you chose this. So you get the real thing.
When someone asks you, answer the question you wish they had asked. Someone says so what do you do, and you say: I am in the middle of changing that. Ask me what I am building.
That is the whole sentence. Learn it, and say it proudly.
It is honest. You are not pretending you still have the old job, and you are not handing over the version of yourself you feel worst about. And it tells the other person how to talk to you, which most of them are quietly grateful for, because they did not know either.
The day I started saying something like that instead of apologising for not having a title was the day those conversations stopped costing me so much.
Choose the room. Marta was my second ever guest on this podcast. In March she invited me to her yoga retreat here. Five months later I am on an island in the middle of the Atlantic because of one conversation.
I came for a week of yoga, but I had already decided from home that I was not leaving when it ended. So I had to figure out where to stay.
I booked a hostel. My first one. A shared room, sleeping with strangers.
Partly the money, I will be honest. But not only. Because I knew that if I booked a nice quiet apartment for myself, I would have a beautiful two weeks and I would speak to nobody.
I did not hope to meet people. Hoping does not work. I put myself in a room where it was almost impossible not to.
Almost everyone here came alone, and none of them were waiting. Not for a partner, not for a group, not for a better year, not for someone to say it was okay. They looked at a map, booked the flight, and showed up.
You arrive alone, but whether you stay alone is completely up to you.
We tell ourselves that being alone means being lonely, so we do not go. And then we are alone at home, which is worse. It is the same thing as those events I skipped last year. Exactly the same.
And one more thing I did not expect. Losing that job made it the worst year I have had in a long time. But I am not sure I would be here, doing this, if it had not happened. That is not a nice thing to say to someone in the middle of it. I hated hearing it too.
A question for you
What do you say when someone asks you what you do?
And if you are in the middle of something right now, has that question ever kept you home?
I’d love to hear. Reply in the comments or reach out. I’m collecting these stories.
It does not cost you anything to share. And sharing is caring!
Until next time, gorgeous: keep moving. Keep questioning. Keep being brave enough to not fit the mold. Your non-linear path isn’t a failure. It’s evidence that you’re paying attention.
And the world needs that.
See you in the next one,
Cris