Christine is Latin for "Follower of Christ"........or a horror novel by Stephen King written in 1983. Depends on your Google results.
Ahhh.......that doesn't help.
OK, start easy: Christine is a mom. Christine is a wife. Christine is a daughter, a sister, a friend, a cousin, a niece, a granddaughter.
That's all well and good, but doesn't define me beyond my relationship to others. At times I stop and really try to define who I am to myself and get a little discouraged. In a grotesque way I often wonder what my obituary would say. "She was a nice person. Didn't do anything extraordinary, wasn't the member of any organizations and didn't have a passion for anything outside of a cold glass of pinot grigio with a few ice cubes."
But seriously, now that I'm going to be forced to talk about myself at job interviews, I'm starting to worry. I don't want to let unemployment define me. And I don't want to start a pattern of writing and blogging about how I can no longer "label" myself as a VP, or as a working mom, or even a stay at home mom, because I am in that in-between place right now. But I have to figure out how I want to present myself to others in order to try and secure that next gig.
On the flip side, I have incredible pride in the fact that I'm raising two children who don't use many labels so why am I obsessed with my own? They've never used black or white to describe someones skin - they use light or dark. We've discussed when and how to use fat and skinny and we remind them that people come in all shapes and sizes. They don't see wealth or poverty in what someone "has" but understand that we do our best to help those who need some assistance, whether it's food or clothes.
So when it comes to trying to describe or define my own purpose, it gets pretty complicated. Do you ever think about your definition? And is mine now officially "neurotic"? Could be...probably don't want to start off with that in a job interview, huh?
1 comment:
Hi. We met briefly at Bossy's no book tour meet up. Stopped in to say hi and found you have joined the ranks of the recently unemployed. I hope things work out for you. My husband lost his job a year and a half ago. Still hasn't been re-employed as a software engineer. He is giving real estate a try, but it is hard too. It is a crazy world right now. But I can identify with your identity crisis of sorts. Who are we when we don't think of ourselves in terms of our relationships to others? I try to ask someone I have just met a different question other than "So what do you do" because sometimes it is nice not to define ourselves by our jobs. "Do you have pets" is a weird opening question though. It is a work in progress.
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