So what do you do?

You know the second question we ask anyone we meet, after of course asking for their name.

It is inherently understood, we are asking if they have a job and how they make a living. It's a weird way to put it no? "What do you do?".

Is work the only thing that we do? Don't we all play many many roles in our lives? But career is central to everything, the most important piece of ourselves.

The reason we ask people what they do is so that we can make judgements about who they are. Even if we don't do it consciously, we are sorting and ranking them in the social hierarchy, sadly.

We derive so much of our self worth from what we 'do'. There's this line from the show 'Mad Men' that I think about often. A character suddenly fired from his job says to his boss — "If I don't go into that office every day, who am I?"

When I first watched the show, I was in college. I did not understand the gravity of that line. Now 3 years into my professional life, I understand. It is scary, I genuinely don't know what I'd do if someone told me you don't have to work from tomorrow. I wouldn't know what to do with myself.

For 8 hours a day, I take the role of an employee. The job becomes you, you become the job, it is forged into your identity.