The dreaded "What do you do?" question can be tricky and loaded, especially for those without a “traditional” job. In our lovely capitalist culture, we've come to define much of our worth by productivity and compensation.
A couple of weeks ago, I offered a survey that might help you determine where your skills and interests intersect with the needs of your community. The survey's goal is to help restore rapport and resilience among neighbors. I’ll be getting back to that soon.
For some of you, community development is your day job. If you work at a social services agency, for example, building community bonds and supporting the social infrastructure of our cities and towns is your paid work. However, many of us find civic engagement and collective action outside of a 9-to-5.
what’s my story
As I prepare responses to some of the survey submissions, I thought it helpful to show you how I think about civic engagement for myself. To give a bit of background, I’m an accountant by education with 15 years of experience in the corporate world. In 2020, just weeks before the pandemic, I quit my job to support my family and pursue alternative projects. That’s a story for another day. 😘
I invested more deeply in my sustainable living blog, Honestly Modern. I created that in 2013 and pursued it as a passion project in the margins around my corporate adventure.
I started a curbside composting company, WasteWell, in October 2020. I sold it a couple of years later when I realized running a transportation and logistics company was not in my wheelhouse (even if it checked every eco-friendly community development box on my wish list).
Today, my schedule looks quite different. When someone asks, “What do you do?" I often respond with “A lot of things," and then let them guide the conversation based on which commitments on the list are most interesting to them.
My husband says I'm a freelance writer, and that's probably the most straightforward answer. I write, volunteer, do most of the domestic work for my family, regularly meet up with neighbors and community advocates, and try to exercise at least a few times per week. Very little of it is paid work, so society has difficulty assessing its value. I know many of you can relate.
Below, I share more about how I invest my time in local civic engagement. I don't suggest it's the right way or the only way. It's what works for me for now. Your ways will be different, and likely will change with time.
Here's how I've used my skills and interests to build stronger community connections and advocate for civic engagement in my neck of the woods.
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