A cry from the unseen underbelly of our overachieving community

“So, what do you do for work?” is probably my least favourite question, not just because it implies that the next most important thing about an individual after their name is their occupation, but because it means I feel compelled to lie about my job on a first date. Again.

I’m sitting in a wine bar in Armadale, wondering if I’m going to have to split the bill with some new faceless corporate Jewish professional, who tells me about his latest non-fiction read (unsurprisingly, ‘Sapiens’ by Yuval Noah Harari). I rehearse what I might say.

I could tell him that I’m a support worker, or I could tell him the truth. I was a support worker and studied social work, until I quit the industry and the degree three years in, after nearly falling asleep on the Monash Freeway due to severe burnout.

I’ve been unemployed for eight months, trying to re-enter a recession job market in a new industry for which I’m unskilled and unqualified, and I'm so desperate not to be broke that I've ended up nannying again.

It's not ideal, at least it’s some cash I can use to fund the inordinate amount of Aldi brand chocolate I eat as I wallow in bed alone, stewing in the soup of my wasted potential.

Also, I moved back into my mum’s house.

Also, I’m 28.

I decide to tell him that I’m a support worker, figuring I’ll just come clean about my futile attempts at job hunting if we get to a second date. There is no second date, and I am once again reduced to a metaphysical crouton in the metaphysical soup of disappointment.

This was not the life I saw for myself.

Younger, hopeful me imagined a wall mosaicked with degrees, a high-paying and intellectually stimulating career, maybe a Nice Jewish Boyfriend.

But things, obviously, did not go according to The Plan, and now I’m on too many first dates with different fonts of the same type of guy, and all my friends are getting married, and all I can hear is “What do you do for work?” screaming back at me from the void.