Who are You

09 Jul 2025

I found a strong desire to answer this question a couple years ago. Who are you? I found the answers unsatisfying. All adjectives and nouns I used to claim no longer applied. Or not always applied. Every one had a counter example, definitive proof of falsehood.

“What do you do?” I recoil mentally. I know what is expected, but I don’t wish to play your stupid game. Do I loathe my job? No. Sometimes. It’s something misplaced. And misidentified - maybe, it’s no hatred at all. A longing for something, something I have come to expect to achieve from job. For no good reason.

Is it Stockholm Syndrome? I pour my soul into it. That’s a lot of energy, stress, and achievement. A caffeine-fueled maelstrom. Swirling. Sucking me in. Is it a wonder that I seek other satisfactions in the same place?

I feel best at work. That’s an accident - I didn’t mean to. By the time I’m fully awake, I’m at my desk. By the time I leave, I am sluggish. I give it my best hours. Day after day.

Do I loathe my job? No. I’m bitter. I stupidly want from it what it will not give me. And I treat it like it will, like we had a deal, like fair trade. It’s insane. Just take the money.

There’s more than money. I’m great at what I do. I feel productive and useful. I feel necessary, irreplaceable. The whole thing would crumble without me. It’s insane. A giant corp. Bzzz, try again. Okay, not the whole thing. But the team I run. Their lives would be ruined, never the same, wasted. Desperate dim husks, human shades, roaming the salt flats with fleeting memories, vague, of how great I was - that’s the future I’m keeping at bay. Bzzz, try again.

There’s more still. The problems. They’re interesting. They’re games, and I want to win. Paused notifications, squishy headphones, familiar editor, and I’m flying. Time disappears.

“What do you do?” I dance. “You’re a professional dancer?” No. I cook. “A private chef?” No. I write in coffee shops. “Like a writer?” Let’s try this again. I’m in between hobbies, but I’d love to tell you about the last one I got into. Yesterday I went for a run.

So I don’t want to be job. Why? It feels claustrophobic. Limiting. Defining. Is it fear of commitment? Peter Pan syndrome, they call it. My generation has it up the wazoo. Not my case, says Peter. I won’t prove it.

I want a better story. Job is someone else’s, I’m in it. How to get from extra to cameo? Sometimes it’s effortless. Like when I move myself great distances to win a place fully foreign. The place is unknown, and I’m not. By comparison, I’m famous.

It’s full of energy. And immediacy. There’s adventure behind every corner. And urgency. And there’s no “busy.” There’s only “prefer.” I want to see you more than the museum. I want to see the waterfall more than you. Come with, and I can have both.

Fast forward. I’m a hero. Proud to please an attentive audience hungrily hanging on every single syllable. Will I want it? Will I want to be the person who lived those stories? Of course not. I’ll want to be living another. Floundering through a new game, achieving victory, or forgiving myself the loss.

That’s the theory anyway. How many losses does it take to beat it out of you? Me? The number is finite. But we don’t collect losses exclusively. Periodic wins refuel confidence. It’s faulty logic, busted, no two games are the same. Even in the second degree. But damn useful, so keep it.