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And I get stumped every time someone asks me where I work and had to say I am a stay at home dad.
It is not a very pleasant experience the way they sometimes respond to that reply. For some wicked reason, domesticated for them means pet.
Which probably explains why I hate filling up forms. It is a deeply excruciating experience trying to figure out what to put on that line that asks: “occupation”. For years I just left it empty and consequently, for years I have been unfairly regarded as a nobody.
Recently Cecille was involved in a painful accident that needed 5 surgeries. I was left to fill out all the medical as well as accident report forms. And there I was, face to face with that line that asks the dreaded question: occupation.
Strangely, this time I found myself bravely putting in “writer”. It was perhaps faith on this thing that I love doing that moved me to label it and then put it as an entry on that once frightening line.
I may not be in the same league as Seth Godin or Rajesh Setty, a Tom Peters or John Wood nor am I a Dave Ramsey, all of who I deeply admire and whose styles I try to emulate.
But like them, I suppose, I was blessed with the skills to tell a story through incessant and often (particularly in my case) emotional thumping of this keyboard. To tell a story which, in the words of Anne Jackson, the world needs in order to be complete.
I am a writer who loves talking of life experiences and share the tools for living I pick up along the way in hope it brings enrichment to the world around me. I am a writer because I love doing work that I believe matters.
Penelope Trunk wrote that what's important is to be kind, and be gracious and do it in ways that make people want to do that for someone else.
Hopefully, through my writing, I am able to do just that.
