The What Do You Do Do Do

De Da Da Da

(not what I wore, but I’ll always say yes to an event where I can wear this)

Last weekend, Nick and I went to a dinner party at the house of one of his rowing friends.

I know a few of the rowers, and I like them so much. But on the whole, I avoid Nick’s big social events.

When I was younger, getting dressed up was reason enough to say yes to going somewhere.

I still love outfits. You know I can talk about clothing and shoes all day. But I now understand that it behooves me to weigh the emotional and physical energy expenditure before agreeing.

I look at the rowers like my high school and Peace Corps friends. They’re all very smart and interesting. They’ve spent intense time together doing something difficult and bonding. They have something very specific in common.

I’m on the outside looking in.

This is fine, of course it’s fine. I don’t need to be part of everything. But for large social events, it’s hard. If I don’t see the people I know, I’m in endless small talk while Nick gallivants around chatting.

And I can do it, but I haaaaaaate small talk. And anymore, my back hurts if I stand for too long. Then I get crabby and I take it out on Nick.

So this cookout.

Nick asked if I’d like to go, and I said OK, and he immediately started telling me why I’d like the people. And then he kept telling me.

I said, “Honey, I said yes. You don’t have to talk me into it. I’m happy to go. Why wouldn’t you think I’d go?”

And he said, “Because you never want to go.”

Which…is true. And not specific to this group.

Whether or not I can enjoy walking into a roomful of strangers depends on the day, the tides, the barometric pressure, the I don’t know what-all. Sometimes I’m sparkly, sometimes I’m drab, and I cannot control it either way. I wish I could.

Summer is way better than winter. Day is better than night. Winter, in the dark, is the worst. If I’m home, I’m never leaving.

There are episode of “Prime Suspect” with the incomparable Helen Mirren that I’ve never watched.

Also, if I’m completely honest: a big deterrent, when considering a large group of DC strangers, is the What Do You Do?

This is the first thing people typically ask here. “What do you do?”

Even when I worked for money, rather than occasional grattitude, I was never a what-you-do kind of person.

I never had an office job I loved. I think back to my choices and I see them steered by insecurity, depression, anxiety, ADHD. Things could’ve been different. My younger life could’ve been different.

But they weren’t. It wasn’t.

In my old job, in which I did a lot of writing, which I do love, I wasn’t writing about topics I found particularly compelling.

The editor of our trade magazine once asked me if I’d like to write an article. I said sure, and asked her what she’d like me to write about.

She said, “Any topic you’re interested in that’s of interest to our members.”

The circles on that Venn diagram were very, very far apart.

During that time, I was going on all these Internet dates—in retrospect, an unreasonable amount—in the hopes of finding love or something adjacent. Immediately, men would ask me what I did.

They all had serious jobs. Many had gone to Ivy League schools. I know I wasn’t ambitious or accomplished enough for some of them.

One guy, as soon as the server handed each of us a glass of wine, started grilling me about my resume. I finally said, “Do you think this is fun? Is this what you like to talk about on dates?”

Reader, it was.

He asked me out again, even though I’d refused to go through my resume, even though I hadn’t gone to an Ivy League school. He was very smart and accomplished, and not my person.

I should’ve said in my profile that honestly, my life outside of work was significantly more interesting to me than my 9-5. My job paid my mortgage, and for me to take textile classes and make art that I loved. It enabled me to travel, which I did as much as I could.

I liked my colleagues. I walked to work, exercised at lunch, and didn’t work weekends. I didn’t fret about clients or have work crises that were actual real-life emergencies.

I wasn’t able to articulate any of that in a concise way. I wonder how my experience would’ve been different.

Nearly everyone who asked me out was a lawyer. They all had to be accessible to take work calls and answer work emails at any moment.

Like Superman, but with appellate briefs.

Good thing is, I love lawyers. (Hashtag not all lawyers.) And engineers.

It’s not about the career path. It’s something about the personality types and the way the brains work of people who choose those fields.

Anyway.

Nick didn’t care what I did. If we talked about it on our first date, I don’t remember. Mostly I remember laughing.

Once Nick and I got to the point in our lives where it was financially possible for me to stay home, which I wanted to do with a one- and three-year-old and my mom, it was scary for me to quit my job. Not because I loved it, and certainly I didn’t priortize it over family.

But I was afraid to step out of the workforce. And what would I say when asked the inevitable What Do You Do?

What I ultimately realized was the people who would judge me weren’t my people. I didn’t want to miss time with the people I loved the most out of fear.

It was like when I started blogging, and writing down my heart.

It turned out there are people who will read about depression (with unskilled drawings!) or the thought of putting my imaginary penis in the shutter slats, and like me for it. Not just like me despite it.

So we went to this party, where I had briefly met exactly one person once prior.

I had a great time.

All my conversations were interesting. Nobody asked me what I did. And these were people with big jobs. I knew this from Nick. In the car on the way over, I told Nick I was worried people would ask what I did, and I just didn’t know how to answer it anymore.

Losing my mom completely upended my identity.

Not just because I’m no longer her caretaker, though that was so much of my time and emotional energy. And an easy answer when people asked.

As the kids needed me less and less, my mom needed me more and more. I couldn’t have paid someone to do everything I did. I’ll never regret devoting that time.

More painfully with my identity, I’m no longer a daughter. And I’m no longer the funniest, fittest person in my mom’s entire world.

I’m me, without my mom, and every single thing that went along with it.

I’m in the process of redefining myself as a human in this world. It’s intense.

There’s not a job I want to go back to unless I need to. For now, I love being home when the kids get home. It’s great not having to request time off to take them to appointments or go to school events.

I love the freedom. I know this is privilege, and I am very grateful for it.

And I need to figure out what’s next.

As I said, though I was braced for it, nobody asked me what I did. We talked about all kinds of interesting things. It was delightful.

In fact, I only heard one person ask someone what they did, and that person was my husband.

There was a lull in conversation, and BLAM! He pulled out the ol’ What Do You Do?

I think it’s partly because much of his identity is wrapped up in his work, though he’d deny it. It’s also an easy conversation starter: Can you believe this heat/humidity? How about those (sportsball team)? What do you do?

But still.

I wanted to pinch him, hard.

I didn’t. I’d like to say it’s because I’ve worked on my emotional regulation. Or that I’d never actually do that.

Really it was because we were standing on the lawn in a circle, and it was still light out, and there was no way to do so furtively.

I didn’t want anyone to leave all, “I don’t know what Nick’s wife does for work, but she’s a pincher.”