A Hard Question

The prompt for Day 6 of Blog Every Day in May is this: If you couldn't answer with your job, how would you answer the question, "What do you do?" I'm taking sort of a loose interpretation of this and talking in general about the question, "What do you do?"

Since graduating from my Masters program, the question, "What do you do?" always catches me a little bit off guard. I usually answer, "Well, I'm a classical pianist and I'm a serious writer, and I teach piano too." One time, a hairstylist actually asked me (before asking me anything else) "Where do you work?" Where, as in, where do you go every day to make a living? Just saying "home" didn't seem adequate based on the phrasing of her question, so I stuttered a little and said, "Oh, I work out of my home, I'm a pianist and a writer." It was so much easier before when I could just say that I was in grad school.

So you see, I don't have an easy response lined up for this question. I can't say "I'm an architect," or "I work in finance," or "I work at the hospital." I could say, "I'm a piano teacher," but that's only one part of me, and I don't even feel like I've fully deserved that title yet. To further complicate things, I've only begun to scratch the surface of what I hope to eventually do with music, and with writing. What I do now doesn't fully describe me, and what I hope for.

The way I see it is that I'm in the very early stages of carving out a life for myself that includes my music and my writing and leaves the most room for what matters most. I've thought long and carefully about my future, and I feel so blessed and thankful for my passions, thankful that medicine, or finance, or law were not my calling in life. I've been given a gift, that my interests don't require me to be away from home all day, because an office or hospital or courtroom job could never win against raising my children day in and day out (in my book). I feel intensely lucky that I will be able to continue to play and teach and write while staying home and being a mom, the most important job I'll ever have.

It's difficult for me to answer the question about what I do because I haven't yet become the pianist and the teacher I want to be, I haven't yet become the writer I want to be, and I haven't yet had children. Today, I don't feel like I have the right words for that question, "What do you do?"

But I am a wife, I am preparing for motherhood. I am a pianist, this is my craft. I am a writer, whether or not I'm paid, or publishing regularly in places other than my blog. I am a teacher, my students are learning, I am passing on knowledge and skill and beauty. What I am right now will lead to who I am tomorrow. I will continue to work on carving out the life I want and remember that sculptures don't take shape in a day.