Friday 22 February 2013

A Conversation With Myself That You Are Now A Part Of

I often have these half conversations with myself, I think it's part of why I started this blog, actually... I figured I may as well be sharing these conversations "out loud" if I was having them anyway.

This conversation came about because I did, in fact, purchase a ticket to this year's Burning Man, and am currently trying to wrap my head around the ... everything... that's involved in my possibly going.

(Notice the disclaimer?  It's my escape route/hatch for when I start to get too overwhelmed with something.  In this case it's "I don't have to go if I don't want to in the end.")

I was thinking, in an off hand sort of way (because these conversations always seem to happen when I'm actually doing something else, like in this case, starting to get ready for a walk to the store and wishing I didn't have to put on pants to leave the house, but that's an entirely different conversation.) about how I would, I suppose, have to introduce myself to people, and how we tend to want to ask someone a) their name and b) what they do.

So I was mulling it over in my head and I thought hmmm, will I say "I'm a spy"  or will I say "I spy"? And then I started to wonder, how often do we describe what we are by labelling ourselves with our jobs rather than saying what we do for our jobs.  And then I realized that it would only work with some jobs.  Like you could say "I'm a doctor", but you couldn't say "I doctor."  That... wouldn't make sense.

Which made me start to wonder how many things you could describe by their... verbage?  You can be a lawyer, but can you "lawyer"?

How many of our jobs are titles rather than descriptions of what we do?  Does a "bank teller" tell?

A receptionist doesn't "reception" do they?

IT specialists... fix computer issues so why aren't they called Computer Fixers?

I don't know you guys, my brain has these conversations with itself all the time.  I don't actually know if there's an answer.

Can you verb-ize your job?

Like, are you a spy or do you spy?

You know?

5 comments:

Dominic said...

Yes.

I'm a programmer. I program.

Most people don't realise, but in fact "program" is an irregular verb:

I program
You hack
He screws up our code

:)

Victoria said...

Heh :)

Anonymous said...

I'm an accountant. We don't count anymore. We more apply policies, standards, practices, to ensure that the reported information is consistent and understandable (maybe only to other accountants, but understandable to someone). So verbizing my job doesn't work as well as it used to when the economy was barter or cashed based.

- Elliott

Anonymous said...

To hell with your job title, the question is this:

Drugs or no drugs?



And you are a spy. The other sounds odd.

Victoria said...

Fair enough Elliott! :)

Well, not sure why that's the question Anon, but I guess it would spark converastion, that's for sure. ;)