Talking About What You Do
The title is pretty much what this is about. Talking about what I do to most people who are not involved in the same field or requesting a service is something that I’ve always felt weird about. When I was make music more consistently, I wouldn’t tell too many people about it because it always felt like I was trying to sell them on something, and I never was. The only people who cared were rappers who thought they’d get some music for cheap or free, which is probably another reason why I didn’t like talking about the music I made.
I feel this way about my photography work as well, but for different reasons. The main reason being that no one really cares. Or at least that’s how I feel when talking to most people. Most people will see a photograph, think or say, “That’s nice,” then move on with their day. Typically, no one cares that you took the photograph, and even more don’t care that you took the photograph, took time to seek out the right model, studio and props, worked to get the perfect emotion out of the model, how you developed/edited the photographs, et cetera, et cetera. And because of this, I’m often question. But then I feel weird when someone actually shows interest in what I do.
My day job is working in the office of a warehouse. I work with all women and two other men (in the office), so for the sake of professionalism, I don’t bring up the work that I do outside of a simple “Photography” when someone asks me what I do outside of work. But being that I’m stuck in an office with these people for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, we talk and become friendly, and sometimes the details of what I do come out because photography is an interesting topic to a lot of people and they want to know what it is that I shoot. Again, professionalism kicks in and I try not to bring up the subject of naked women. Not at all because I’m ashamed of what I do. I’m just trying to not start anything and potentially get into any trouble at work.
The above is one very specific situation of me not wanting to talk about my art. But I often just feel like people aren’t as interested as they make themselves seem to be and if I let myself start talking about my art I will go to far and start annoying them with it. This is especially true when talking with women about what I do. They are often genuinely interested, but I still feel weird about it. I’m sure this is just a personal thing that revolves around my fear of being uncomfortable around someone after making them uncomfortable. But I have to remember, as one of my co-workers said while we were talking about: “We grown.”
How do you feel about talking about your work? Do you feel that people actually care about what you’re doing or are they just showing interest to not be rude? Or if they are genuinely interested in what you do, are they interested enough to actually know the details behind what you do? Do you keep your description of what you do to a simple “photogrpahy”, “draw”, “music”, et cetera, or do you not mind getting deep into what you do with someone if they ask? Are you shy about talking about what you do?
Just something I’ve been thinking about the past couple of days.