And what do you do for a living?

Normal people are boring. And I mean this with no disrespect intended towards any of you normal people. The reason I call you boring is because many of you I've met don't seem to go through the level of internal strife that I am perpetually always in, and that isn't necessarily a bad thing. I might view my over thinking, over analyzing, agonizing brain as a virtue, but ask anyone who has bothered to have more than five conversations with me and they will vehemently disagree.

The reason I start with 'normal people' is because all of us go through normal day-to-day interactions, in the midst of which we sometimes (or quite often) happen to meet new people. The second question that always greets you when you meet someone new is – "So, what do you do for a living?" or some version of that. The people I see around me always have an answer to that very mundane question – I'm a banker, a journalist, a musician, a freelance writer, a full-time bum, or I work here and I do blah. When it is my turn to answer, I just fumble... What do I do for a living? Hell, I wish I knew! Hell, I wish I knew what you were asking me to begin with so I could start constructing an answer for you!!! Are you asking me how do I make the money I make? Or what do I do to live? Those two questions have diametrically opposite answers... Unless you're equating money to life, in which case I think I've already run out of things to say. How do I make my money – I work... Different things at different times, but as of now I go to an office, or try to since that is something that always makes me tardy. I talk to people, work on some excel sheets, organize some events, all to make me feel like I am saving the world, or at least some tiny little minuscule portion of it. And I get paid for saving that tiny little minuscule (sometimes). What do I do to live? I breathe, I eat... Don't we all?

I could probably package a nicely gift wrapped conventional answer, but there are some glitches in that, the most glaring of which being that I haven't quite 'subscribed' to a 'profession' yet. But aside from that, I have a very unsettling feeling about the ease with which that question is asked. What do I do for a living? Can you even begin to fathom everything that is encapsulated in that one simple line? You're almost asking me what am I willing to identify myself as. What is that pervading part of my life that defines me... That, my newly found friend, is heavy duty. And if we sit down to answer it, forget five conversations, we probably won't reach even the end of the first. Yes, I do wishfully dream of a day when I find what I do for a living. When my work is my life, and who I am, and how I live, and what I would like to be identified as. Till that day, I will resist being a manager or a journalist or an analyst or a film maker or a musician or a social worker. Till that day, I will resist putting a name and a tag on myself, because what if that is NOT what I do for a LIVING, but just something I do?