I have this friend. They work in politics, and they’re damn good. But you’d never know it unless you dragged it out of them. Their job doesn’t walk in first. It doesn’t hang off them like a merit badge. They shut it off. Always have. Because their identity was never for sale.
That alone makes them a unicorn.
We live in a world where your job is supposed to be your North Star. Your dinner party opener. Your main character trait. Don’t believe me? Go to any networking event and try introducing yourself without your title. Watch the confusion spread. The polite head tilt. The slow fade into someone more "defined."
But something is shifting. Or at least, it should be.
Somewhere along the way, work stopped being what we do and started being who we are. That might've worked when jobs came with pensions and 40-year clocks. But now? Most of us won’t even stay in the same industry long enough to collect a full zip-up hoodie, let alone a gold watch.
And still, we cling.
We list our employers in our Instagram bios. We wear company merch like it’s couture. We feel more comfortable telling someone we "run marketing for a fintech startup" than we do saying we garden or sing in a local choir. We chase jobs that sound sexy, not because they are—but because we want to sound sexy when someone asks, "So, what do you do?"
We’ve made work our worth.
Then the world cracked. Maybe it was the pandemic. Maybe it was burnout. Maybe it was the creeping sense that the company isn’t going to love you back.
So we moved. Literally, metaphorically. I left Brooklyn. Landed in very rural upstate New York. No Whole Foods. No Starbucks. No WeWork sticker status. I met neighbors because I kept showing up in the same places as them; yoga, local shops, the pub, whatever passed for a sense of place. And you know what no one asked me?
"What do you do for a living?"
They asked who I was. And at first, I didn’t have a good answer.
Because I had spent a decade performing my worth through my work.
But without that scaffolding, I found something else. Turns out, I like to build shit out of wood; a house for the squirrels, a set of Adirondack chairs, a planter box. Not to go viral on TikTok. Because creating something, overcoming the fear of power tools, is a dopamine hit. And because, if the world goes sideways, at least I know how to build a chicken coop.
A friend of mine jokes about zombie apocalypse readiness. Who do you want in your bunker? The person who can draft a flawless policy memo—or the one who can wire a generator? Who knows how to grow food, fix a leak, or build a shelter?
We laugh. But not really.
Because the truth is, our economy is fragile. Our attention spans are shorter. Our jobs aren’t secure. And more people are realizing that the skills we were taught to value—PowerPoint prowess, Slack responsiveness, LinkedIn polish—don’t mean much outside of capitalism.
So what does?
Curiosity. Grit. Creativity. Actual skills. The ability to sit in silence without checking your email. The guts to start over.
And maybe, most critically, the courage to say: "My job doesn’t define me."
Somewhere along the line we turned every passion into a monetizable moment. You can’t just love to knit. You have to start an Etsy store. You can’t just garden. You have to become an influencer with a tomato yield.
But what if hobbies were just… hobbies?
What if your joy didn’t need a business plan?
Because here’s the thing: those hobbies? They build real skills. Patience. Precision. Learning from failure. They remind us we’re still capable of building, fixing, finishing. And maybe they don’t make us money. But they give us something better: an identity that’s ours alone.
I used to think I wanted to be a power player. I looked up to the bosses. The ones who walked fast and talked faster. The ones who got the keynote slot. The ones who built empires.
But then I looked closer.
I saw what they gave up. Their health. Their families. Their hobbies. Their sense of humor. Their identity, outsourced to performance reviews and press hits. They became the job. And when the job went away—retirement, reorg, whatever—they unraveled.
You don’t want to be the empty chair at the boardroom table. Not really.
So here it is. The next time someone asks you what you do, try answering differently.
Tell them you bake bread. Or coach your kid’s soccer team. Or just say, "That’s a big question. How much time do you have?"
And when you ask others, don’t ask what they do. Ask who they are. What they love. What they built with their own hands. What they’d teach you if you gave them an hour and a beer.
Because those are the stories that matter. The ones that live past the layoffs. Past the reorgs. Past the perfectly formatted resumes.
If your whole identity fits on a business card, it might be time to expand.
Work for the money. For the safety net. Work for the weekend. To build a like.
Because the job won’t be there forever. But you? You will be. So who the hell are you, really?
Find that answer.
Before the zombies show up. Or worse, retirement leaves you numb with boredom.