Occupation: Writer

on shifting identities and the work that moves us

When I first started writing professionally back in the early aughts, it took a while to get up the gumption to call myself - out loud - “a writer.” I’d only published a few things, after all; I wasn’t making a living from my writing yet. It felt audacious to claim the title, even as it became more and more true.

To ease in, I started putting “writer” in the “occupation” line on forms at doctor’s offices, schools and the like (with three small children at the time, I had plenty of opportunities to fill out forms.) Once in a while, a curious receptionist or health-care provider would ask “Writer? What do you write?” but most of the time the word sat unnoticed, a silent and timid demonstration on the page.

More than a decade later, I’d become comfortable with the title. It fit me, after all: by that time I’d been writing hundreds or thousands of words daily for years. I’d become widely published, and my writing supported my family. “Writer” was my identity, as much as “woman” or “mother”.

Sometime in my mid-30s, when my marriage started unraveling, I pretty much stopped writing. I’d fallen out of love with my life, and weaving a narrative around carefully-chosen words felt impossible, since I didn’t know where the narrative was going and didn’t trust my interpretation of where it had been.

I worked as a copywriter for a while, writing website descriptions for stand mixers and video scripts for nonstick pans; articles for local business publications and tourism sites. But my personal writing dried up. I let my blog go stale, stopped pitching magazines and websites, stopped attending writing panels at conferences, and instead tried to learn more about social media analytics, content strategy, and design tools. Every now and then I’d sit down and try to write an essay, but after getting out a few lines I’d run out of steam.

But as it turned out, my identity as a writer had stuck so fast that even in the years I could no longer seem to find words to fill pages, I reflexively penned that same word on every form that came my way. Occupation: Writer.

I’d been producing a podcast as a hobby for a while, but found myself increasingly drawn to podcasting as my writing dried up. I still needed to express myself, and still wanted to communicate with an audience - but instead of tinkering with words to turn out the perfect turn of phrase, I relished the freedom in showing up on the mic, saying what I was thinking in the moment, and then moving on.

And after starting The Mom Hour podcast with my business partner Sarah Powers in 2015, that is exactly what I did, over and over, more than 600 times in 8 years. As our audience grew to a size I’d never enjoyed as a writer, the podcast turned into a full-time business for both Sarah and I. And I’ve loved podcasting! It was just what I needed to find during a time of life when the written word and I were on hiatus.

So it might be surprising to hear that never, in the years that I have made a good living as a podcast host, even as I’ve loved what I do, have I ever written “podcast host” as my occupation on a form. Not once. It’s been “writer” all along - even when I wasn’t actually writing much, or anything at all.

I guess I’m not really that surprised, after all. The title of “writer” was hard-won, and a few years’ pause wasn’t enough to convince me to jettison it. I may have focused on other things for a while, but I never stopped being primarily a writer at heart.

Maybe, during all those years when I wasn’t actively writing, I used that line on the form as a sort of silent protest against myself: “You say you’re a writer? Huh, could have fooled me…” Or maybe, I wrote it as a quiet reminder to myself not to let that identity slip away entirely.

Either way, I’m glad the title still existed out there in the world, on all those forms, during the years my words weren’t regularly coming to the page.

Because thinking of myself as a writer isn’t really about the way I earn an income, it’s about a way of relating to the world - a kind of quiet attentiveness and reflectiveness; a willingness to dig deep and excavate truth, that creates space for the words to come.

Sometimes that happens as part of a job. Sometimes it happens outside my paying work. Sometimes - for a time - it doesn’t seem to happen at all. But the words are still there, waiting for me, as long as I keep holding space for them to show up when they’re ready. I’m glad I held that space for as long as I did, in the form of two little words: Occupation: Writer.