When the pandemic hit, everything and everyone was frozen in time and circumstance. One consequence of that, at least in our collective conversations about financial assistance and vaccine distribution, is that people are defined by their jobs. I know that there have to be metrics in order to be as fair as possible, and everyone knows they’re not perfect. It’s just – how many “essential workers” in March of 2020 were just be riding out their essential job, paying the bills until they could finish their degree or raise their child or pay off their loans? Or start their own business or get a job they really want, a job in their field?
This way of categorizing people shouldn’t surprise me, as I’ve lived in Washington, DC, for two decades, a place so notorious for job-as-identity that it’s a joke. It’s well known that if you go to a party around here, you’d better damn well have an answer to the question, “So what do you do?”
I have my elevator speech, of course (see Footnote 1). But I’ve become increasingly intolerant of the question. First, the people who ask – knowingly or not – are comparing the answer with some ideal, and the question can be a code for “how much do you make per year?” Second, it assumes that this snapshot of your life, today, is where you want to be forever, even if inside you’re screaming to get out of your current circumstances. (That’s why the word “homeless” is so hurtful. Like the inability to combat the systemic lack of economic opportunity in a place with exorbitant housing costs is the one trait that should define a person.)
My inspiration for trying to find a better answer to the “what do you do” question is Veda Simpson, who died in 2014. She was (among other things) a writer, a very good amateur singer, and a vendor for Street Sense, the DC newspaper written by and for people experiencing homelessness and economic hardship. Veda sat in her wheelchair at the corner of 13th and G Street NW, downtown, and sang and chatted with people as she sold papers. One time she gave me a Valentine, like schoolchildren give each other, and I still have it. One of the speakers at her funeral said that the first time he bought a paper from her (she never told anyone the price – just asked people for what they could pay), he asked her to tell him a little about what she did. He assumed she would tell him all about selling the paper. Instead, without missing a beat, Veda said, “I’m here to praise God.” And she was. She was one of those people who radiated light.
I still haven’t had the courage to answer the “what do you do” question like I want to, like I would in an ideal world, like Veda did. But I’m working on it for when we start having social occasions again.
“So what do you do?”
“I try to live in a way that has the most positive and the least negative impact on the earth and its people. You?” or
“I try to leave the world a more beautiful place than I found it. You?” or
“I try to practice kindness and thankfulness in everything, but I don’t always make it. You?”
I think it’s the rare questioner who wants a real answer. They want to know your job title and GS level, and then they probably want to talk about themselves. Or they just don’t know what else to say as a conversation-starter, and they’re riding out time until the line clears up a little so they can get some mini-quiches while they’re still hot, and maybe a Costco brownie bite or two before they’re gone. (That’s certainly why I’m there.) It doesn’t help that the room is crowded and there’s probably music playing too loud.
I’ve gotten pretty tired of trying to sum myself up in a sound bite that I’ve contrived based solely on other people’s expectations that I can never meet. At the very least, though, I’ve stopped asking the question myself. I prefer “What makes you tick?” or “How do you like to spend your time?” or recently, “How has the pandemic affected your life?” If people define themselves by their jobs, which is a perfectly valid way to go about life, they talk about their jobs. But I’ve found that asking a more interesting question gets you more interesting answers. Maybe they’d rather talk about their families, pets, hobbies, or favorite books. When you go down that road, you may accidentally make a lifelong friend.
The COVID-19 vaccine hierarchy came out, different for each municipal area. I was proud that Douglass Commonwealth (see Footnote 2), my adopted city, put grocery workers just behind hospital workers in terms of priority, and adopted a complicated algorithm to make sure all wards of the city were represented as equitably as possible, while combating a severe vaccine shortage. Still… govermnents like to talk the talk about the importance of the arts and entertainment economy, but – and I’m not saying this surprised me – arts practitioners were not on the list of people vital to “Preservation of Societal Functioning.” Singers, many of whom have not been able to do what we do for over a year, were lumped into the last category, “16 and older.” In other words, “everybody else.” So unless I lied to get in line in front of someone else (which plenty of people did) or I could prove that I had something else deemed a “real job,” I was last on the list, because freelance classical singer, writer, teacher isn’t a real job, even though I damn well pay taxes. And “grocery workers,” in the government’s vision, are “grocery workers” forever. So it goes.
Next time I’m tempted to ask someone “So what do you do,” I’ll try to remind myself that I’m creative enough to ask a better question.
Footnote 1:
“So what do you do?”
“I’m a freelance classical singer and writer and editor and voice teacher, and photographer though I don’t really make money off that, if that’s what you’re asking, but it gives me tremendous pleasure, and I’m a serious birdwatcher, and I have a stand-up paddleboard and like to be out on the water at all times if possible, and I love driving but I try not to because I’m trying to set an example by reducing my use of fossil fuels because somebody has to, which is why you see me on a bike a lot, even though I don’t consider myself a serious cyclist at all because it’s hard to ride a bike when you really want to be stopping to look at birds, and I have a really great spouse and family of origin and family of choice who are a big part of my life, and I’m a cat person, which is weird because you’re not supposed to be a cat person and a bird person, oh, and I like dogs, too – I just don’t want to have one in the city because I’m too lazy to walk a dog in the rain or snow, and I like traveling even though it makes me feel guilty for using fossil fuels, and I like reading but I read kind of slowly because I’m an editor, so while I’m cooking (which I’m really good at, and I’ve been getting all my vegetables from a CSA subscription with a local farm since about 2004) I sometimes listen to audiobooks that I get from the public library because I’m cheap (and I get all my clothes from the thrift shop) and I’ve probably left something out, but what do you do?”
Footnote 2: I’ve been referring to my adopted hometown as Douglass Commonwealth ever since 2016, when the DC City Council made a resolution that that’s what we’d be called if we ever became the a state. I didn’t realize this post would reference a current event, that the U. S. House of Representatives voted last week to make it so. It’s still a symbolic gesture, but I personally think that Douglass Commonwealth, honoring the great statesman and abolitionist and writer Frederick Douglass, is a great name. So I use it.
