True colors

What do you do? It's one of the first questions asked when meeting someone new. In effect people are asking who are you, but what if what people do has nothing to do with who they are? In some cases it doesn't.

Have you found your calling? Do you know what it is? If you're not at it, could you quit what you're doing and go for it, make it sustainable? So what do you do? If you can't remember what possessed you, if you're thinking what the hell was I thinking, wasn't life supposed to be more than this, well... It pays the bills and feeds the family and/or one ravenous cat.

I heard a psychologist suggest that wanting to have fun at work and with what you do is a childish notion. I hope I misheard or misunderstood (the radio was on but so were the kids in one cacophonic choir.) I'm sorry I missed the explanation as to why loving your occupation so well might be for the worse. Because most of mankind can't? Because we can't all start chasing stars, someone has to get down and dirty, literally?

A child stares longingly at the ice rink before the ice show. The child's parents imagine the child gliding across the rink, competing, performing, excelling. The child follows the chiller truck and dreams of driving it one day. That may be the ultimate fun job when you're four. It might still be the ultimate fun job at forty. What we don't suspect and what the driver does not care to share is that he drives as a meditation. That the absolute perk is not having to take any of the work home. That those free hours are his to use as he pleases. No one looking over his shoulder, no one calling after hours, no one threatening to take over if he goes on vacation or turns his back for one second.

Nah, you say. The driver only took it as a second job to pay for alimony after a messy divorce that cost him more than just money. You know, maybe he did. We can't really know without knowing him which one is the case. Is it something he does or is it who he is. As long as it sits well with him, I guess it's none of our business.

Don't ask me what I do. I'm working on it. Ask me who I am and I'll tell you the same. Just don't ask me to stop chasing that star quite yet. They fall out of the sky all the time. And if, for whatever reason, probable or inconceivable, this turns out to be a less than stellar crash and burn ride, I still won't have the skies gloating. You can't blame a girl for trying. Wouldn't you rather go down fighting under your own flag than sail for the rest of your life under a false one?