Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Job Description

I'm always amazed by the vast array of things you can do to support yourself in this life (and I'm talking about legal activities here).

Not that there's anything wrong with jobs. Doctor, lawyer, teacher. All perfectly acceptable things to do. Just not acceptable to me.

Of course, they do have the advantage of being a succinct answer to the dreaded question at dinner parties: So what do you do?

And how do you explain that, at the moment, you're doing a variety of things in the hopes that you can support yourself long enough to allow the thing that's nearest and dearest to your heart to take off, only you can't quite say what that thing is, because you're sort of inventing a whole new category here and you've been so busy trying to make it work that you haven't really had time to come up with a decent description of what it is yet?

And by the time you get to that point, the beans have gone cold and your dinner companion's eyes have glazed over and you find yourself envying, ever-so-briefly, those who actually have a one-word job description.

My advice? Figure out what that one word is, even if you have to make one up. Then ask brightly, "And what do you do?"

It's just easier.

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