Clariman wrote:My point was a more general one thank LinledIn specifically. I thought it would be interesting to have a discussion about how people define themselves or present themselves to others, when they are involved in lots of different things.
Perhaps I should have put the question a different way. For example, if you're at a social function and someone asks "what do you do?" how would you respond. That is just another example but you can discuss your own.
I think it's a good question and one that many people only face when they're forcibly removed from their 'badges and titles of office' and lazily associated status. It's simple to be your job title, say a Wall Street 'Vice President', despite there being 2,000 of those in your company alone.
So the question might be how do you project self-worth to socially competing others, perhaps a peer group, when there is no employer giving external credibility to that title?
'What do you do'? the stranger asks. Which is simply an applied prism to socially guage you through.
I've on occasion previously answered 'Oh, nothing' as a bald answer to such a naked question. Their attempts to pigeon-hole and judge 'respective merit' neutered. But that can be a conversation killer (seriously), so I tend to pitch the vague aloofness so as not being seen to compete or out-succeed the questioner. 'Oh I just have a side-operation doing [roughly] XYX that is doing Ok...', or similar, and leave it at that. Strangers won't probe further.
It took me a few years out of the career rat-race to no longer care, one bit, how others judge *what they perceive I am*.