To lie or not to lie
What on earth are you meant to tell people when you’re trying to start a new chapter?
I just spent a week in New York - a place driven by work and careers. I’ve travelled a lot and American’s hustle culture is on a different level and New Yorkers in particular seem to be allergic to taking breaks. I think that environment is probably great for people trying to accelerate their career or build a business but, for my current chapter, it was a weird space to navigate.
Despite me always saying that I don’t like people and don’t like making friends, I always seem to make friends when I solo travel. Never really purposefully, but it always seems to happen… unless I am very purposefully not talking to anyone, which usually consists of me not speaking out-loud so people don’t know I’m english (the perks of being racially ambiguous). Anyway, I got to speaking to a few people and, as it always does, the question ‘so what do you do?’ came up. The response I wanted to give was ‘nothing’, however, when people know you’re in New York for a vacation because you ‘just felt like it’ and you’re sitting in soho house, it’s hard to just tell people that you don’t have a job and leave it at that.
Now, in my quest to rid myself of the constant need for people to see me as successful, telling people I just exited my company isn’t helping me move away from that external validation. So, my question (to myself… and anyone that wants to input) is - should I lie? I really don’t like lying. I’m not good at it and I see it as an effort that I can’t be bothered with. Lying is long, I need to then remember the lie, remain consistent with the lie and make sure all of my surrounding stories corroborate with the lie. LONG. I’d rather just tell the truth, not particularly because it’s the right thing to do, just because I’m way too lazy to maintain lies. With the exception of necessary lies, eg. surprise birthdays, all of the times someone (cough cough my cousin) has told me they’re pregnant and I can’t tell anyone etc etc. When I can see a point in lying, I can do it. So, back to my question - is lying about my job (or lack there of) a necessary lie in order to move forward in my journey to separate myself from the need to be linked to a successful career, job title etc?
I’m currently in Amsterdam for a couple weeks and I might test out lying. I’m thinking to go with a half truth so it doesn’t get too confusing. Perhaps just saying I worked in Talent Management and now I’m on a brief career break while I figure out what job I want to do next… hopefully no one finds this blog and hopefully I actually remember my plan to lie.
I’ve also just realised I never wrote about week 2 (because New York was week 3)… and I kind of can’t be bothered but I saw friends, went to a workshop and celebrated this new chapter with my friends and family which was cute. Okay, that’s all now.