Because you are what you do... whether you know it or not

Earlier this week the whole swirl of life seized, all in a moment, one sudden pause. No sudden clarity or epiphany came with it, unfortunately, though my perceptions did change. I'd been zooming through the common panic and shudder of life in late capitalism, working my job, idolating some artistic liberty and space, when all of a sudden I was face-to-face with facts. I am thirty-two. I am buying my first house. I am employed, married, and perpetually delaying my dreams. When the world stopped, I had Gramma on the phone. Her Long Island accent for a madeline, she said, "well, what is it that you do?" For answer, no words just me barfing air. How was I to reply?

"What is it that you do?" is a common enough question. Getting to know people, you ask it. Pretending to get to know people, you ask it too. It's a mingling question. Usually I give a superficial answer, just the title: I'm a project manager. Ask a criminal why he's in prison, he says "handcuffs."

"What is it that I do?" The question implies an identity, a purpose, a role in society, all of which I've always preferred, privately, to hang on my avocation, my writing. Asking what someone does is never a question about their hobbies. For that you say, "What do you for fun?" or "What do you like to do?" What you do is make money, and that's what people want to know about. How do you make a living? Where does the money come from? What actions do you take to produce your cash? What class are you in? I've always hated this question, but as I sat there on the phone with my grandmother, who was not mingling or summing me up, who has no need for summary, having known me my whole life, since my first placental slide into this world, I felt something, call it an an identity crisis.

Who you are and what you do are impossible to separate. My identity is, at least in part, an ever-flowing product of my experiences. A third of every weekday--sometimes more--is given over to my actual career. My inability to speak at all intelligently about what I do felt grossly like self-ignorance. It may be giving too much power to my work to say that because my explanations of it have always been superficial and embarrassed, that I too have often been superficial and embarrassed; that because I often dread my workdays as a mask I hate wearing, I have been inauthentic, and too much afraid.

I realized in that brief calm that the unknown I'd been living around and my timidity in approaching it had hamstrung me from having any real success in either my vocation or my avocation. It had, in fact, only furthered the notion that the two things had necessarily to be separated, a box of ties and a box for paints. All week I dress out of one of these boxes; weekends, or when I go to town, I don the turtleneck and yearn for progress in my art et cetera et cetera. Neither of these identities has ever felt real, because both alone are half of the puzzle. Pretending to be just the artist feels phony. Ignoring the artist is an even worse lie. 

I tried to answer Gramma as best I could. I told her I worked for a major international corporation. I told her I manage projects, I talk on the phone. When people need things done at the major international corporation, I help them do it. I like to think I recovered from my air-barfing well enough to convince Gramma my life adds some kind of value to the world. "No wonder you're so busy," she said. "That sounds like a lot."

Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. Right now I'm in the long early part of the year, completely bored, struggling for some sense of purpose within the corporate coil. It's this boredom, and the uncertainty of a sluggish economy and the quarterly RIF-age I've been weathering since for years, that has catalyzed my little identity crisis into, I hope, something good, long lasting, and honestly worthwhile for myself and society. Bored as I am, my question has become, if I don't do shit all day, what is it that I do?

I'll be honest, I have little love for my major international corporation. Even on my best days, ours is a relationship of convenience. And yet, I'm aging. I start to think I need a career. I'm buying a house, so of course I need a career, but that doesn't mean that the current corporation is the right fit, or even that a corporation is either. As I sit, bored and anxious, I know there are other possibilities. Could I go into business for myself? Could I work in another industry? Is there a way my actual skills could be blended and put to use in a way that is not only more lucrative but more satisfying than the bureaucratic paper pushing I do now?

For five years I've been a project manager without really knowing what that means, not in any academic way. I do not know the work I do as a discipline, but approach it with an almost feral animosity. I ask questions, listen for trouble, make suggestions. Mine is a common sense approach divorced entirely from anything resembling canonical business knowledge. Cutting the crap like I do is most of the time the right way, I think, to manage projects. Only ever reacting, though, makes it impossible to see the big picture or to make long term plans. One major concern is that not having a grasp on the discipline as it exists in the market keeps me frozen in my current position. I can tell potential clients or employers I have experience, but I can't be certain if I can actually speak the language I need to speak. Could I do the work outside of its current context? 

To really know what I do, to be able to communicate it to others, to enhance my own confidence in my ability to do what I do, I have decided to get certified through the Project Management Institute as a Project Management Professional. From what I understand, the certification process is not easy, requires an expensive examination and expensive courses, but it seems worth it, a necessary step toward better job security and stronger self confidence. 

On this blog, over the next few weeks, I will post a series of articles on the topic as I read through the Project Management Body of Knowledge guidelines and start to research courses.