Do You Work?

She said in what I perceived (either rightly or wrongly) as having a condescending edge: Oh—so you are still not working--right?

It wasn’t anything I had not heard before from a dozen or so different people over the past 27 years.

I reacted neither with defensiveness nor with apology to the pseudo-inquiry.

My even-toned light-hearted response was Actually I work every single day of my life. I hit the ground running first thing in the morning and I do not stop until I collapse on the couch around 8 o’clock at night. I work hard all of the time—I just don’t get paid for it.

And then I touched her on the forearm, leaned in and said You understand exactly what I mean—right?

But I am not all that sure that she did.

And while I walked away feeling rather self-satisfied, I quickly realized that had I thought of it, there were a few more things I might have liked to have added. I realized that I might have also said In my world, an off-premises job would be a luxury. In my world, it would be a luxury to run to a space where I have no emotional ties to the people I work for and with. It would be a luxury to be surrounded by tasks of no personal consequence where I might be validated monetarily for my efforts and in writing at yearly reviews.

Just once, I would like to own the I can’t because I have to work excuse for well-assessed expenditure.

Because the stinging truth is: My time is no less valuable or important than any other working person—office structure has no relevance in the equation.

And while I have come a long way in accepting the perks and pitfalls of my stay-at-home personal assistant profession—a career of no regrets--sometimes I wish I had a paystub as an indicator of my worth. Because it would make life so much easier if I could justify my title by a salary easily referenced on Glassdoor, and a resume posted on Linked-In.