This is one of the trickiest questions that I have to answer. When you meet people, relatives and friends, inevitably they want to know what you are up to? And the typical question is something along the lines of “so what do you do/” or a “where do you work now?”
This is a kind of a trick question because the concept of freelancing is not very familiar in Sri Lanka. And depending on to whom you are talking this leads to more probing questions to figure out what exactly that I seem to be doing for a living.
I have various ways to describe what I do. And these are some of those answers.
“I am a consultant” – this works well with outsiders. But for long lost relations, sometimes this turns out a bit suspicious. For one, they still seem to think of us (as in our generation) as kids, and they refuse to believe that people our age can actually be consultants.
“I have my own company” – I hardly use the word business. For some reason, identifying myself as a businessman does not appeal to me. I am in a knowledge based business and hence the term consultant is more appropriate, in my personal view.
“I am a freelancer” – I say this when I am in the company of people in the same industry or who are familiar with the concept of freelancing. There are still people out there who think that if you have no job, you cannot possibly be serious.
The typical follow up questions are to figure out how one can make a living by not having a regular job. And I have a fun time playing with their minds!
