I wrote a while back about the “what do you do for a living?” question, but recently I’ve been asked a slightly different question, “What is it you do ?”.

The first person to ask me this was an Apple store employee. I simply smiled at her and said “I do things I like, and don’t do things I don’t like”

She looked puzzled, but smiled back. I often ask myself  if thats an arrogant thing to say. It was well intentioned, but it doesn’t fit into the lifestyle of many.

I suppose I could have taken the work route, and said “I run a number of consultancy businesses”, not a terribly exciting answer for most i presume. I could have taken my passions as a response, “I’m a blogger, a photographer and a wanna-be writer”. Probably more interesting if you’re a creative. I could have taken it at a personal level and said “I have a wonderful life and I’m extremely grateful for it”.

Is this boastful, should I have said,” I have a crap job, but I’d really love to be an astronaut ?”

Instead I asked her what she got passionate about, was she a creative person. She blushed slightly, but said she loved to crochet, and design patterns, it was something she was taught when he was young. But she had that sparkle about the subject, that ease of which people talk about the things they love. We chatted a while longer about creative things.

So should we blush a little more, perhaps sound a little arrogant, and just push the boundary a little in terms of telling people what we really love, and not what they’d expect. Perhaps you’ll hear something a little different, and different is good.

If this blog post was thought provoking please let me know your experiences in the comments. I’d be delighted if mentioned this on twitter. Why not sign up by RSS or e-mail to hear more.