Be honest with your verbs

Whatever you do, don't bullshit yourself.

“So, what do you do?”

This question usually causes my left eye to twitch. It’s bad enough that I left my fortress of solitude to be in this hellhole of a social situation. But to make matters worse, social mores dictate that the “normal thing” to do during this awkward exchange is to share my current job title with a complete stranger. This way, we can “get to know each other.”

I despise every second of this exchange.

I hate it because I have to admit I’m a writer and an editor. Don’t get me wrong: I love my job. In fact, it’s my dream job. I just don’t like answering the follow-up questions.

“Oh, really?” the stranger usually asks. “Where can I read your stuff?”

Have you heard of this newfangled thing called the internet? Just Google me, bro. But spoiler alert: The search results will underwhelm you. If you want to understand me, try searching “imposter syndrome.” That will tell you everything you need to know about me.

Being a professional writer or editor isn’t as sexy as people may think.

For writers, admitting your complete lack of readership isn’t easy. It’s the whole tree-falling-in-the-woods thing: If a writer writes and nobody reads it, did the writer actually write? Does he even exist? And why is everybody staring at me now? Haven’t these people seen an existential crisis before? Sheesh. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to return to my comfortable obscurity. My first mistake was leaving the house.

This conversation is even more troubling for editors. Without a byline, editors rarely see the limelight. Instead, they lurk in the shadows between words and punctuation. And people only recognize their talent—or lack thereof—when they screw up. Miss one little wayward homonym, and the entirety of the internet coalesces in the comments section to wag their collective virtual finger and type, “There, their, they’re.”

But my profession doesn’t define me. To paraphrase Chuck Palahniuk, I am not my job; instead, I am the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.

To help me keep things in perspective, I learned a neat trick when forced to talk about myself. Tim Herrera, a New York Times writer, wrote a great essay called “Remember: What You Do Is Not Who You Are.” In this piece, Hererra encouraged his readers to “disentangle who you are as a person from how you spend your days to make money for rent and groceries.” Herrera provided the best advice: Think of your jobs as verbs, not nouns. So, rather than saying, “I’m a writer and editor,” I should say, “I write and edit.” Though subtle, this mental shift decouples “what I do” from “who I am.”

But remain vigilant: Disingenuous verbs plague the modern workplace. Fight the urge to use bizspeak, that empty-headed jargon festering in every white-collar setting. Here, many smooth-brained sycophants shift paradigms, pick the low-hanging fruit, rightsize and onboard teams, push the envelope, and synergize core competencies—all while refusing to kick the can down the road, stick a pin in it, or table this discussion for later.

Blah.

Work inspires us to exaggerate our verbs. Rather than admit we goof around on TikTok all day on the company dime, we fill our LinkedIn profiles with a smorgasbord of obtuse verbs (e.g., orchestrate, commandeer, convert, launch, and transform).

Quit bullshitting yourself. Unless you’re Mozart of Beethoven, you haven’t orchestrated anything. Unless you’re a pirate or a military general, you’ve never commandeered a thing in your office. Unless you were in the Spanish Inquisition, you haven’t converted anything (or anybody). Unless you’re a rocket scientist, you haven’t launched shit. And unless you’re an Autobot or a Decepticon, you haven’t transformed a damn thing.

Imagine you’re talking to “the Bobs” from Office Space. Ask yourself a simple question: What do you do here? Be honest. And if you say something about your “people skills,” I will tickle you until you wet your pants.

If we are being genuinely honest, our work verbs should be minimal. Think of every verb you commit during the day. Your verbs can be automatic (breathe, sleep, defecate), mundane (drive, cook, snore), embarrassing (fall, snore, fart), emotive (guffaw, sob, scream), exhilarating (shake, caress, fight), cliche (live, laugh, love), or a George Carlin routine (shit, piss, fuck). If your work verbs outnumber your non-work verbs, please seek help.

And not everything we do involves physical action. Descartes famously wrote, “I think, therefore I am.” Although those who don’t think still manage to exist (and enjoy much political power these days), Descartes’s self-evident axiom establishes a bare minimum threshold for our verbs. Not to wax philosophical or get too meta, but sometimes all we can do is just be. (Or not be if we rope Shakespeare into this esoteric conversation. Or, if we heed the sage advice of the Beatles, let it be.) To-be verbs—am, are, is, was, were, and been—require the utmost honesty, especially when applied to ourselves.

So, what do I do, dear stranger? Yes, I write and edit. But I do a lot of other stuff, too. I walk, talk, listen, sleep, snore, eat, chew, cook, fart, shit, piss, fix, fib, play, breathe, snore, bathe, drive, peddle, lift, chase, coach, travel, climb, jump, fall, travel, kiss, hug, fuck, sit, read, love, laugh, yell, cry, and argue—just to name a few things. Honestly, there are too many to list.

But enough about me. What do you do?