Cotton Candy

I recently wrote a short bio to accompany my online profile for the BWN. Most days, I think I can put together a coherent sentence or two.  But on this day, the act of typing something about myself felt more like trying to write a grant proposal during economic crisis. And in the end, all I could come up with was the following:

Bio "Single, career gal becomes married, lady of leisure, professional vagabond, and citizen of the world since December 2007. When she is not strolling the streets of Barcelona with her precocious cocker spaniel, Diana Mahmoud is wrestling with Spanish homework, watching American television via Slingbox, and taking salsa classes at a nearby school. Really, what more could a gal ask for?" In other words, fluff. Had I been writing my bio a few years back, I could have provided substantive details about who I was, where I worked, what I did. I could have boasted about working for a company that just earned the number one ranking in Forbes magazine. I could have mentioned that I starred in a television commercial for a local medical company, or that a history project I once managed on the Vietnam War won an award for best educational software. In other words, I could have offered BWN members a juicy steak rather than the cotton candy version of my life.
But as a trailing spouse, the one who gave up career and country to follow her husband across the globe, I didn't have anything to share with my new peers. For all practical purposes, I am boring. This fact is the only problem in my otherwise perfect life. When I meet someone new or am in a crowd of professionals, I’ve got nothing to say when asked the inevitable question "So, what do you do?" “I'm retired. I wake up every morning and do what I want to do rather than what I have to do. I am in the business of making my hardworking husband's life as easy as possible outside of his office.” Trust me, I've thought up as many answers to the question-- if not for other people, than for myself. And while all are perfectly true and rational explanations, they feel about as comfortable to me as the residue of icky sticky pink stuff on unwashed hands. Why is this? Maybe part of the problem is cultural. I am a Benjamin Franklin, waste-not-want-not American, who hails from the land that boasts two whole weeks of vacation for its workers. I am also first-generation American, the product of hardworking immigrant parents, business people, who toiled from dusk to dawn to give their children everything they didn't have. I wasn’t raised to do nothing. Are these reasons why I am impelled to define myself by what I do rather than who I am? I guess I could try to go out and find a job at company willing take on the trouble and expense of obtaining my work visa, but would that really solve my identity crisis? Or, can I find a way to revel in the fact that I live the kind of life others dream about? Can I have my cotton candy and guiltlessly eat it too? Could you? --Diana M.