What do you do?

"So, what do you do?"

I fucking hate how that is like the first question people ask you. Your job does not make you, but somehow it does. People categorize you by the work that you do. I feel like it may just be a DC thing, but maybe it's just any metropolitan area. Everyone is preoccupied with careers. I think it's very unhealthy and bizarre.

I run into it all the time now that I'm an adult. While working at 930 Club, people are CONSTANTLY asking me what "else" I do. "I now you just don't work here," they say. I sometimes answer with "I'm in between jobs right now" or "Still trying to figure it out" which prompts them to wince. I know what they're thinking because I've thought it, too. There's no way to make someone stop talking to you and literally walk away from you faster than to answer their question with: "This is my only job."

I have learned to stop caring what other people think about what I do for a living because I know there is SO MUCH MORE going on with me right now than Mr. Joe Accountant's or Ms. Jill Awesome Freelance Photographer's opinion of my career choices thus far. I even got propositioned by a "big shot" man who was enchanted with me and knew someone who writes for Rolling Stone. Who the fuck cares? The eighteen year old Music Industry major I used to be might have cared at one point, but the jaded, skeptical twenty-three year old me can see right through it for the bullshit it really is.

Now, the hard part for me is determining HOW I'm going to make a living. I still haven't figured it out yet and I'm about to quit ANOTHER job. God, it's so embarrassing how unstable I am. :\ I wish someone could tell me the answers.