Clipboard

It wasn’t her fault. How could she have known?

I sat in the cool September sunlight, listening to the crunch of gravel beneath slow moving feet. The smell of coffee, the clink of crockery and background chatter of afternoon tea-drinkers….

And the clipboard lady, hovering over me and my half-finished scone with awkward questions.

It wasn’t her fault. She was just doing her job. She had no way of knowing her question would spiral me into an existential crisis.

2014. I had given up my 9-5 the previous year and now filled my week with a smorgasbord of mothering young children, giving language classes, cooking at our church community café and squeezing some article writing into the gaps.

Now this clipboard lady was looking at me expectantly, pen poised on the final line of her questionnaire, unaware she was asking me an all-too-familiar question. The question on everyone’s lips at the time.

There is nothing wrong with the question itself… but I would twist it, curve it into my own insecurities, let it dance its dainty steps of nuanced judgment around me. Judgment that was rarely, if ever, intended.

‘And what do you do?’ she repeated, the hint of a frown forming.

Ah yes.  That question.  Those five words and their ability to reduce me to internal rubble.  My broken plans, responsibilities and dreams tumbled in a heap as my mind reeled from one activity to another. Was I a tutor? A writer? A cook? A mum? Which should I say?

‘I...I’m...’ I began awkwardly, ‘...Oh, just put housewife.’

She nodded thoughtfully, ignoring my friend’s indignant protests in the background about my multi-tasking working life. Then with a closing gambit that whooshed me straight back to the 1950s she added, ‘Well, just tell me what your husband does. I’ll put that.’ 

She stared blankly at my laughter until I realised she was actually serious.

It had become a familiar scenario since leaving the safe enclosure of organised salaried work. That life I used to know. A life of softly tapping fingers on keys, the metallic scrape of filing cabinets opening, the ping of incoming emails, the gentle ceramic clunk of a coffee cup placed on my desk.

While I was there, few people knew the exact tasks and projects I covered, diminished though they had been as the years flew. Back then, no one ever quizzed me on how my working hours were filled. As soon as I left, however, everyone seemed disproportionately anxious to know how I spent my days. Some couldn't understand me irresponsibly choosing unemployment.  Others applauded, asserting that putting the present moment before pension plans was ‘counter-cultural’ (which I infinitely preferred to ‘lazy’).

But one thing all of them wanted to know... What are you actually DOING?

Admittedly, this particular interaction took place on a weekday afternoon in a National

Trust café, and lounging around sipping latte when others are deskbound does rather hint at a life of leisure. The truth, however, was that I had been teaching that morning and, even as I sat there, I was making notes for an article I’d pitched, squeezing dry the little bit of time before the school run and the onslaught of mum-taxi activities. I wasn’t exactly heading up the London Stock Exchange, but it wasn’t ‘nothing’ either.

Despite working harder than I had in years, I was juggling such a hotch-potch of freelance tasks that I still felt I wasn’t doing any one thing ‘properly’. Which in turn made me feel like I wasn’t a proper person, somehow less valid than others. Certainly not a proper ‘grown up’.

That was over ten years ago. Things are clearer now, but sometimes I still pause for a few seconds when people ask that question.

I pause, because there are so many undercurrents and it can feel desolate.

And yet, there’s really nothing wrong with the question itself. I’ve asked it of others so many times myself. Perhaps it is to fill a gap on a form. Perhaps it is just to fill a gap in conversation. Sometimes it’s because people genuinely want a way to know more about who you are, what makes you tick, and how we spend our time seems a good place to start.

But then that’s also the problem on one level. I’ve said it elsewhere and have heard others say it too: In this identity-hungry world, ‘What do you do?’ can sound like ‘What are you worth?’ And if you say ‘nothing’ to the first question (or even worse, if other people have already decided that your answer is ‘nothing’), then what does that make you?

At times, I even heard - misheard - that question as 'What are you doing to earn your right to be here?' We can let it become a judgment, not just on how we spend our days, but on who we are at the deepest level.

It's this fear of being ‘nothing’ that makes us crave more, take on more, try to be more. More than we humanly can. More than is healthy. It makes us take on more so we can seem like we are more.

But maybe what we already are, who we already are, is plenty? With or without our work.

And maybe we never really were defined by what we do anyway.

Because we are who we are. Not what we do.