Thoughts on a rainy day

"I stay away from anything about which I know nothing," I said.

"Good idea.  So, what's your thing?"

What's my thing?

Most people always have something as theirs.  When engaged in their careers, their response might be about what they do.  A doctor.  Landscaper.  Pilot.  Ditch digger.  Whatever it is that they do. 

Of course, increasingly what people, especially the younger ones, say as their thing comes across as mumbo jumbo.  "I help clients maximize their productivity in their customer-interface" is a kind of thing that we just nod along to and remind ourselves not to ask that person anything ever again!

On quite a number of occasions, my father has expressed his surprise at how people earn money these days, in contrast to the old days when he was an active participant in the labor economy.  He was a civil engineer who built things.  Farmers grew crops. Miners dug stuff. Workers made widgets. One didn't need much explanation.  If we talked about so-and-so who is a medical sales rep, everyone immediately knew what that meant.

Not anymore.

Now, it is a different world.  Nobody seems to offer a simple description of the thing that they do.

So, what's my thing?

In my first job, I was a computer engineer.  That, however, was not my thing.  It didn't last even three months.

In my second job, I was a hotel engineering manager.  The three weeks on the job was solid evidence that it was not my thing.

In my third job, I was a biomedical sales engineer.  Nope, that was not my thing either.

Day in and day out for the six years that I worked as a transportation planner after graduate school, I knew it was not my thing.

I taught for two decades.  So, is teaching my thing?

Now that I have prematurely retired, is being retired my thing?

So, when he asked me "what's your thing?" I had to quickly think about a response. 

Pointing my finger at him to suggest that he had a good point in the conversation, I chuckled.

He too laughed.

Laughing might be just about my thing!