what do you do?

Venus day letter on the utter boredom of being asked this question

My best dates and my most sparkly, fun, whirlwind romantic connections - many of which became enduring, beautiful friendships when the romantic angle didn’t work out - all had one common thread running through them. This thread is very unique to my experience, and a highly subjective one. I’m not encouraging or idealising it in any way, nor would I advise someone to ‘perform’ this.

I’m actually only making an observation, one that I find so interesting - We never talked about what I do for work.

We were so carried away in banter, jokes, music sharing, and conversations about all of the wonderful things in the world, that not for one moment did I realise that the dude didn’t even remember to ask what I do for a living. There may have been a very tiny mention. There was no droning on and on for hours about what he does, what I do, and feeling like we’re in a business interview, pitching ourselves to each other.

Some of the most beautiful times I’ve had connecting with human beings I’ve only just met - especially men, romantically - were times when there was so much to talk about that my career was simply not given a fuck about. Or treated as my identity.

Some of the best men I’ve ever had the privilege of getting to know genuinely didn’t care what I do or how much money I make, they only wanted to get to know me, love me and cherish me for my heart, my soul and my feminine presence in their life.

Do you remember how Emily in Paris taught us that in the French culture, talking about ‘work’ outside of work is frowned upon and considered unnecessary? That is so French, and it’s one of the many things I admire about their culture. They’re not obsessed with making work their entire identity, personality and social worth.

It’s only since the pandemic - when so much pivoting, uncertainty and literally being forced to live one day at a time happened for all of us as a civilization - that it truly hit me how the “What do you do?” question can be so sensitive, sore and icky for so many more people than just me. I’m not the only weirdo. Suddenly, I had so many friends who found themselves at crossroads and dead ends in their work life. Asking that question brought up shit. I could feel people starting to become ashamed, uncomfortable or angsty in their energy, when they struggled to come up with a ‘normal’ answer to keep up the performance that we all thought we had to keep up - that the world literally falling apart was no big deal, and everything is fine and back on track the moment the lockdowns ceased. I decided to stop asking the question altogether.

My ‘What do you do’ has been a meandering path. I studied something, and then was bitten by severe anxiety, trauma and burn out in that path. I went onto a different path for a while. I took a gap year. I tried things. I started a business. I had my own very non-hustle way of engaging with said business. I refused to participate in anything that required me to perform excessive and unnecessary suffering as a social badge of honour. I refused to over-focus on the ‘hard’ whenever I sat at tables where it was a competition about whose hard was the hardest, and bonding was based upon commiserating upon how much everything sucks. I am a sensitive person who likes to talk about what’s good in life, and amplify it by giving it attention. Unfortunately, I tend to be giving Marie Antoinette to people by daring to talk about finding joy instead of participating in the whole difficulty flex competition suckfest.

(She doesn’t want to constantly whine and complain on a beautiful night out with friends after everyone’s working hours are over? She thinks we don’t need to be constantly keeping the office alive outside the office? Ugh, PRIvELeged).

~

The first source of rest wisdom that I was ever exposed to was the OG rest as resistance account - The Nap Ministry. I am going to be quite generously quoting her words in this piece, and if you haven’t already, I must encourage you to go read, absorb, reflect on and support her work.

I’ve also been a member of The Daily Rest Studio for two years now, and I can’t convince you enough of the medicine this has been for me. For my business, my life, my relationships, my health, and my consciousness. It’s the best investment I’ve made into softening, optimizing and enhancing every aspect of my reality all at once. You can only know when you actually get a taste of the TDR Studio by joining it. You can also visit TDR’s Instagram for beautiful, beautiful words and wisdom on living a life where we are gentle on ourselves while doing all the hard things we must do. Emmie is also the author of The Deep Rest Salon on Substack, and it’s a balm for the soul to read her pieces here.

I realised at some point, in my Doing journey, that my personality is fundamentally unemployable by late stage patriarchal capitalist grind culture. I have had my successes, fame, noteworthy press features and moments of accomplishment in my journey as a sustainable fashion creator. I’ve also had life happen - so many times. Traumas, transitions, betrayals, health setbacks, all kinds of things that make me human. That make me incapable of having a continuous, linear, upward graph of a career. The past year, I’ve almost not worked at all as much as I used to before, and I refuse to bother to explain, justify or advertise the personal dark night of the soul that was behind that.

It’s just one year. Literally just one year. Like I heard in a beautiful conversation in The Daily Rest’s Soft Business workshop recently, one bad year in your business is literally just a small blip on the radar. I needed that bird’s eye perspective so much. This workshop was about the art of failing well. Something we don’t do enough, nor talk about enough.

Anyway, why do I have a problem with this very normal, innocent question - So what do you do?

A conversation that is imminent, immediate and inescapable in any interaction with another human being in this world, most of the time?

I am a highly sensitive person, yes. I sense energy and intentions, yes.

I, of course, have my own insecurities, wounds , projections and fears of being ‘not enough’ in a hundred ways that makes me feel icky to answer it.

I have no highbrow analysis or critique of this very natural, normal human curiosity. It’s just, I find it UTTERLY fucking boring.

I can sense people wanting to pigeonhole me into a box, form a label and file me in a category inside their mind, when they place premature importance on finding out what I do. I can sense how so many people want this information to want to decide how they’re going to behave with me based on my answer.

Some of them want to figure out why I look like I come from money (I’m a Venus-ruled fashion girl, I’ve got style and taste baby). And this specific flavour of nosy energy is too loud for a psychic water sign woman like me to ignore.

I can feel them itching to tie my entire identity, personhood and worth into what I do for work, because they do that for themselves.

The moment I answer this question, etiquette demands that we launch into a whole conversation about what their job is as well. And honestly, more often than not, I literally do not care. Does everything have to be networking, even when I’m not at a networking event?

I’m so much more interested in who someone is as a person, than what they do for a living. I love when people are honest about their in-between spaces, their lulls, their “I don’t know, I’m still figuring it out,” or their passions beyond moneymaking in life. The flavour of their energy, personality and heart is what decides my relationship with them, or my energetic boundaries around them.

Not too long ago, somebody on a dating app asked me what I do, after explaining what he does with a whole lot of fancy corporate jargon that, at the risk of sounding sassy, felt to me like it’s intended to make one sound more important in the organisation than one actually might be (everyone is a Senior Something now, aren’t they? Haha)

This was also right after he mildly mansplained astrology to me, and cited how this was his opinion as someone with ‘ten years in the talent industry’ as validation for his commentary. Men, I don’t recommend doing this in front of a witch of 28 years. ;)

I, in the spirit of this being a cute non-serious conversation on a romantic platform, gave a rather cheeky yet honest, authentic and heartfelt reply about what I do.

I said that I have a slow fashion brand, and that this energy permeates every aspect of my life because it led me to start practicing slow living too. And I added that I create, curate and design sarees - the traditional Indian unstitched, draped garment - with an intention to seduce modern Indian women into wearing more sarees again.

I was told, “That’s a great pitch.”

I am certain this response was well intentioned.

I was also deeply ick-ed. Pitch?? This is who I am and how I live. It’s not a pitch.

The feminine way of business is devotion, it’s heart-centric creativity. The way that creation and being a creatrix - of a business, an artwork, a meal, a book, a baby - is literally our spiritual essence, is so alien to people who live in the world of pitches and performances and profitability above all, isn’t it?

The feminine way of business is creating something that’s an extension of your own energy. It’s a living, breathing part of you. It’s almost annoying for that to be called a pitch, and I can never find words good enough to explain why. It’s just… felt. The weird women who get it, get it.

One of my favourite long-running social experiments is that whenever I’m asked about what I do and my intuition signals a lack of wholesome intentions, I proceed to give the most vague, ambivalent, curt of replies.

I say, “I’m in fashion.” Or less. Sometimes, I even go full weird and say something like, “ I like writing these days,” or “I’m studying ____” (because I’m never not studying something), or “I’ve been learning yoga lately.”

And I get to witness these humans flail about with desperate, thinly veiled counterquestions that sometimes actually arrive to an explicit, “But what do you do to earn money?”

I don’t look like a student anymore, so stating what I study isn’t satisfactory because it doesn’t provide a box to fit me into. Being in your almost 30s is so very sexy, and looking like it is even sexier. So, they’re really shaking at this point.

Call me the Downton Abbey grandma, but isn’t it a bit tacky to be so obsessed with figuring out how I make my bread? And being so in my face about it? Especially when you’ve witnessed my vagueness long enough to understand that there’s no need to ask further?

What’s it to you, really? Why is it so important to know, why is it impossible to have any conversation with me without knowing this?

There’s very few people, circles and spaces I’ve been in where being asked what I do energetically felt REALLY exciting to talk about. Where it felt safe, fun and GOOD to share. Where there was no ego battles, flexes, envy and lowkey weird vibes of someone wanting to glean how to judge me. A lot of times, I’ve been made to feel like I owe people what I do as an explanation for why I seem to be happy in my life.

I don’t mean to be cocky (maybe just a little) but with the amount of Pisces and Scorpio I have in my chart… I be sensing, and I be knowing things. When I was younger, in typical maiden era naivety, I blamed myself for being the weird one who didn’t like being asked this. Now, I get it. I embrace that I can sense subtle energies that most people don’t realise I’m sensing, and my body always, always protects me by having a certain reaction to a question.

“How is it financially viable to do slow living?” is another question that strangers have felt entitled and audacious enough to ask me on Instagram. And not in as polite words as I put it there just now.

How does one ever answer something as deep, complex, nuanced, and HIGHLY subjective as the financial details of practicing slow living, over a DM? And why should they? There are layers upon layers of highly unique, highly personal lifestyle factors that anyone’s financial reality is built upon. Everyone’s seasons of life are completely different and unique to their experience. There is never one consistent answer. And unless their job is literally being a financial guru that’s teaching other people how to live a certain way with a certain amount of money, I truly don’t believe that we get to be asking them these questions.

It’s truly, truly crazy how we see someone’s tip of the iceberg Instagram feed, literally just a highlight reel of their lived human experience, and assume that we know everything there is to know about them, or that them sharing a cute picture of an afternoon spent at home means that their entire life must be just them napping on the petals of a flower and eating grapes.

My life and my Instagram stories.

We forget that we are not ever just innocently and objectively watching someone’s life, we are constantly projecting our own unhealed, toxic productivity culture wounds on everything we see and interpreting it all from our lens filtered with our own shadows. We are filling in the blanks with our own assumptions, flavoured by our own reality that is completely different from theirs.

Maybe, it’s not that someone is ‘flaunting their privilege,’ it’s just that you haven’t allowed yourself to take just twenty minutes to simply lay down in six months and your nervous system is fried, trigger-happy and burnt out from scrolling while ignoring what your body is screaming at you for.

Maybe, everything isn’t an extreme. It’s not either you suffer, struggle, grind, hustle, glorify exhaustion and beat the drum of misery every moment of every day to be seen as worth something, OR you’re a princess laying on her sink-in-bed and never working again.

How does one even in relax in modern life, with all the responsibilities?

Well, does relaxation only mean four hours at the spa, an international vacation, or not leaving bed for four days?

Can there be no such thing as taking a tiny nap, just because you can? As taking one less responsibility a day because you know you’re on that part of your menstrual cycle where you feel emotionally fragile?

Rest, slow living and relaxation are not just for The Evil Rich and Privileged. This is a pathetic, brainwashed spell of traumatized, wounded overexhaustion that we’re put under to believe that someone like me is a Marie Antoinette for taking an afternoon nap and posting about it. Of course, the system is to blame for everyone being perpetually fatigued, overworked and resentful. But there is so much in our control, so many really tiny things we can do for ourselves. There is so much power we DO have. Over our bodies, and our lives.

We’re all so fucking angry, bitter, and tired. Fragile as dried out shells. All because of a sick culture where you cannot even, acceptably, talk about choosing the easy path for anything, ever.

Are people sharing the beauty and their joy in their lives on social media to blame? Is bashing social media and the Big, Bad, Evil Influencer who inspired comparison in us always the answer? Are we always the hapless victims?

Or is it also our own unconscious use of social media, our lack of discernment between reel and real, our compliance in being addicted, hypnotized and our lack of awareness that there is so much depth, nuance, grey areas and stories to everything that we see that we’ll never know about?

I feel like we love having someone to blame, so we don’t have to take responsibility for our own feelings around social media, our loose boundaries with social media or our own style of social media consumption. Influencers are our favourite scapegoat.

These apps are designed to addict us, of course. I would never blame someone for the way social media depletes us. Managing our relationship to social media is one of the biggest shadow work experiments ever handed to humanity. It’s our own journey how it turns out to be for us, honestly. Social media has given me some of the biggest gifts and blessings of my life. It has also taught me so much, everytime I spiralled into an addictive phase with Instagram use. It will always continue to teach me.

Coming back,

What do I even do, anyway?

I am a fashion designer. I have an online shop, currently under maintenance. Again, I create, curate and design Indian sarees with an intention to seduce Indian women into wearing our traditional drape again ;) ;)

I am a revivalist, I work only with sustainable, handcrafted, heritage Indian textiles made by artisans from the remotest corners and craft clusters of my country.

I work from home, and sell primarily online. I have no immediate plans of having a physical shop, and I might never, I don’t see it as something ‘above’ having an online shop. I don’t do stitched apparel at the moment, because I do not have a good tailor in my employment, and that’s the kind of stress I am not in the mood to take on right now, even though many might say I am ‘supposed to.’

I have a devoted, regular, beautiful circle of longtime customers that always come back for a repeat purchase and think of me the first when they want to buy a saree. That is my success, and that is enough. For this season of life. For this moment, right now, as I am writing to you.

This, above, is the answer I should be giving, and it’s as honest as ever. It’s the reality and truth.

But there’s more to it. I have more to say about how I really feel about what I do.

I love my sarees, I love inspiring women to drape sarees, and I am right now focusing on just sarees. I don’t know when this might shapeshift into something new. And I don’t care to explain a plan to anybody right now.

Whether I want it or not, whether I ‘effort’ it or not, it is the way of the Universe that I am always evolving, growing, transforming, shapeshifting, metamorphosizing, energetically dying and rebirthing and then dying and rebirthing some more. It is inevitable. Everything I have ever done, and will ever do, as random as it may have seemed in the moment sometimes, comes together to carry me somewhere beautiful that I’m meant to go. And because my business is an entity that comes from me and is created through me, it will be doing the same.

This is what my entire past has been, up until this moment. I was always growing, evolving, and getting better. Even my shifts, changes and derailments were all perfect, in the end. Whether I speak a solid, laid out ‘plan’ of what I’m going to be doing in the next five or ten years or not, is irrelevant. Do people go home and sleep better at night if they get to find out what my five year plan is?

From 2018-2023, I had been a blogger and sustainable fashion influencer. Most people still identify me as her. I found the people in the social media and influencer sphere in India quite tiresome. They always tried to extract a lot out of me while wanting me to work for free or accept payment in peanuts. I stepped away from paid social media collaborations because I believe that my effort, aesthetics, energy and talent with creating visuals is worth far more than what most brands are willing to spend (which is shockingly meagre and I am perpetually aghast at the poor level of treatment given to Indian influencers at large). I eventually stopped engaging with prioritising this career path. And yet, it was never wasted time. Every single thing about this journey deeply nourishes all that I am and all that I do as a designer. I pour all of my blogger energy into flexing my own label and my own collections of clothing now, and that feels the best to me.

This is all of the stuff, and some more, that comes to my mind when someone asks, what do you do? Because it’s a journey, not a sticker label.

And this question often paralyzes me, because I can’t translate all of this into a single sentence.

Nobody in any casual interaction actually even cares enough to hold their attention span for the real answer - an answer this true. They seek a quick fix, neatly bow wrapped answer that they can use to categorise me with as little effort, vulnerability or depth as possible.

So, I stick to saying I’m a designer and I have an online shop of sarees. I dovetail inquisitive, unnecessary quips about why I don’t have a brick and mortar store or some other fashion design stereotype that one might say I am not ‘normal’ without.

I design, collect and curate a shop of sarees. “Just” sarees. This is what I do.

And you know why I say that this answer, and this conversation, feels so boring, bleh and lacking to me?

Because… Really, what do I do?

Sure, I’m in fashion. I make sarees.

I also tend to my home, I make the most beautiful dinners for a four person family where every single ingredient is homemade from scratch instead of store bought and my festive spreads are an event in itself. I work from home and I work for the home, in acts of service, labour and nourishment, and both are work. As every woman in the world knows.

I create food timetables and recipes for a household where eating tasty, beautiful and healthy food is an everyday priority and something we don’t take lightly.

I create the most beautiful ambiences. I am a designer of moods, vibes and lived aesthetics. Just for myself, my home, my family, my cats and all my loved ones. It’s not for money, and it still counts. I can bring together just the candles, the incense, the visual decor, the music and the vibe to create for every activity - reading, exercising, working, cooking. I make life beautiful. That’s what I do. Living with me is living a beautiful life and caring about beauty. That’s what I do.

I make the most beautiful baths.

I make playlists. For every situation and every season.

I make Pinterest boards, and with an uncanny amount of aesthetic devotion, that.

I paint. I draw. I keep books of hand-torn collages, paper and scissor moodboards, and art journal spreads. I am a seasoned expert of having the most beautiful conversations with my long distance friends over texts, making each other our journal entries.

I work with the somatic, I move my body in energetic ways that alter my entire reality and experience of life, every single day. I dance, I meditate, I do embodiment practices, I process emotions and release old stories through the movement of my hips as much as the stillness of Yin. I allow Shakti to come and dance through me.

I practice divination. I commune with oracle cards. I study the tarot, at the slowest snails pace possible. I read birth charts. I study deep astrology, the ancient way. I practice Human Design. I study art history. I write erotica that nobody in the world reads. I connect to the planetary energies and celestial rhythms of this Universe, and I engage with how these astrological themes and subtle undercurrents play out in my life. I tune into the energy of every astrological season, and unearth the life lessons and divine assignments in it all.

I raise cattos. I walk barefoot on grass and interact with the energies of the Earth, the flowers, the sun, the moon, the grass, Venus, bodies of water.

I work with the moon and so much of my life has bloomed with my relationship to practicing rituals for every phase. I manifest with her, I release with her, I tell stories about my life to her, and I witness how gently and beautifully she makes sure everything comes to me exactly when I am meant to receive it. I look back on my moon ritual journals with utter awe for how she gracefully, softly, beautifully blesses the unfolding of my life, my intentions and my desired manifestations.

I live in rhythm with my four phases of the menstrual cycle, as well as with the phases of the moon - she rules me.

I design and perform rituals as an act of devotion to myself, my life and the Universe. I do so many rituals. They’re the sacred containers within which I truly get to connect with the unseen worlds like they’re my besties.

I connect to the archetypes of so many Gods and Goddesses and learn so much from my relationship with them, my little chats and vent sessions with them.

I raise plants. I make bread. I make salads. I make little infused oils to rub onto my skin and I charge them under the full moon. I create oil blends for the daytime, and oil blends for the night. I love having white sheets, and I am learning how they are SO incompatible with a person like me who’s marinating in all sorts of oils on her hair and skin all day everyday.

I make little infused extra virgin olive oils to dip bread in. I make the loveliest cheese platters to go with wine, and I can do that on the tiniest budget. I craft little luxuries for myself and my home, every single day, and constantly reinforce to everybody in my life that we deserve this just because we exist.

I energetically cleanse my home and practice little acts of devotion to the home spirits within its walls. I speak blessings and intentions into the food I make to specifically heal what requires healing in my home and family.

I connect to women. Sisterhood and feminine healing is something I Be, and Do. I devote time to women’s spaces and women’s circles every single day where I find nurturing, nourishing, medicinal friendships with sisters around the world. Nourishing sisterhoods are like my life’s work and purpose. I learn SO much from communing with women in women-only spaces where we gather to practice, to meditate, to share experiences, to learn from each other, to heal our feminine energy. Every aspect of my life is touched by these sisterhoods. They are a part of everything I do - my relationships, my business, even the way I live my daily life. Everything that I do has been blessed, enhanced, inspired from or somehow touched by a sister, somewhere.

I create homemade brews, potions, medicines and recipes for every ailment.

I write 30 different journals, each with it’s own highly specific flavour of what’s written within.

I collect and heal with crystals. I keep altars where I make offerings and ritualize representations of what I’m calling into my life.

I make the best essential oil combinations, and I design aromatherapy informed fragrances for different times of the day and different spaces in my home.

I am not just a fashion designer. I am a designer of my life, my pleasure, my relationships, my meals, my tea blends. Prioritising pleasure is my North Star, I infuse it into my work, my play, and everything in between. I landscape design the garden of my mind.

I stock floral petals of all kinds and invent brews like moroccan mint, jasmine, green tea and lemon. Or rose, hibiscus, fennel, lavender and cinnamon. Or ashwagandha, turmeric, ghee and milk. Or cacao, rose, cinnamon, paprika and cacao butter. I make herbal brews of cute little drinks to keep me company all day, as well as to offer to my family for any specific energy I feel like they need at the moment.

I make smoke blends with flowers and safe herbs all the time, to cleanse my home and raise it’s vibration.

I give my friends permission slips to come to me with their dirtiest, sluttiest, most unhinged confessions and anecdotes any time of the day without any need for disclaimers or apologetic prefaces. I hold safe spaces for the women in my life to speak about their sensuality, their sexuality and their pleasure without hushed tones.

I do all of this, and so much more.

Just like you.

So when you ask me, what do I do, how do I ever answer?

How does *just* my moneymaking job even begin to cover what I do?

How will yours ever encapsulate all that you are?

We are all oceans, and yet we insist on hyper-fixating upon offering only that one shallow tide pool for the other to swim in.

I’m so grateful to receive your precious time and attention. Most of my writing tends to be intimate, heartfelt, vulnerable, longform and in depth. Hence, they’re almost always protected behind a paywall for energetic safety. Every letter I share here is akin to correspondence with a dear friend, and it takes quite a lot of time, energy and investment to alchemize life into writing for you. Paid subscribers help me feel safe to share openly, and make it possible for me to be supported in putting in all the hours it takes to share these aspects of my life as written pieces for the world. If you’d like to receive more of my writing on Venus days, new moons and full moons, I invite you to subscribe for INR 333 p/m or INR 3333 for a full year. If you don’t have the space for it right now, you’re also most welcome to become a free subscriber and enjoy occasional public posts like this one. Thank you for enriching this space with your presence <3