Saturday, September 23, 2017

What Do I Do All Day? and Venn Diagrams

I've been in my new job long enough that I've gotten paid three times (yay!) but I still haven't figured out how to explain to people what I do. A few nights ago at dinner, the Boy, Claire-Adele and Jack all talked about their days. I talked about what I ate for lunch. I ran into my neighbors while walking Fox who were just thrilled to hear about my new job, and I surely disappointed them when they asked what I do and I said "Uh..." After I a minute, I thought of how I deal with data like it is a jigsaw puzzle, but telling a story of how to solve a jigsaw puzzle would be infinitely boring. "First I did the yellow pieces, then I did the edges, and finally I did the sky. I was almost done and then I found a piece under the coffee table..."

I told my friend Carla about my situtation. She is an accountant, which in spirit isn't much different than what I do, except almost everybody knows about money. Not nearly as many people know about data.

As I was walking to the Macrina Bakery for lunch the other day (see? I'm doing it - talking about lunch instead of what I actually do), I saw an ad for the new Blade Runner movie, which made me think about venn diagrams, because in the past two weeks I've drawn a lot of venn diagrams.

While this has nothing to do with what I do at work, it has everything to do with what I do.


Should I have made the "Ryan Gosling" circles one circle or two? Hmm. This type of question is what I ask myself at work.

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