I have in the past year declared myself as “Unemployed” when passing a border. This has happened three times; once while driving into Canada, and twice while entering the United Kingdom by air. I don’t recall any other nation asking about this at all. This may, at first glance, seem like a stupid idea. One may be tempted to think that a better idea would be to list some unremarkable and harmless job that blends nicely with life’s mundanity, but beware; after once listing my profession as “Coordinator” while landing in the UK (while employed as such), I was quizzed on what I coordinated. My take is, being caught in a lie at immigration would be a bad thing. My unemployed status, while admittedly not something immigration officers like to see, is the truth, and I’d rather explain the circumstances behind the truth than wind myself up in a lie. Not only am I a terrible liar, I just don’t like doing it.

However, this answer invariably leads to further questioning, usually about how many funds I have on me or access to, and whether or not I plan on seeking employment or using social services. The questions used to make me nervous. They don’t any more, at least not while entering the UK, who in my experience so far have the strictest entry protocol. I get that the officers have a job to do, and I always have truthful answers at the ready. Even for unexpected questions; at the Canadian border I was asked if I rent or own, and then for how long I’ve rented my apartment. That officer was frank about my needing to satisfy his concern that I wasn’t planning on just loitering indefinitely in Canada, that I had something at home that I had to go back to. I found it odd that the entire time he was questioning me, he never asked me to remove my motorcycle helmet. And it’s a full-face helmet. I’d think someone concerned about my identity, and that I might be thinking about breaking the law would want an unobstructed look at my face. The officer at the US border on the way back home did make me take it off. She wanted to make sure I really was the same person on the passport.

I tried a different approach for this current outing. On my landing card for Heathrow, I listed my profession as “Traveler.” It was perhaps a nano-deceit. Not entirely truthful, but not untruthful either. I wasn’t sure it was going to fly, and might even backfire. I briefly reconsidered while standing in line at immigration, but stuck to my guns, and all was fine. At the same time, it didn’t go unnoticed. I was asked how long I had been traveling, and how I funded myself, but none of my answers raised any red flags or eyebrows, and I was stamped through in good time. The ease of passage may have also been in part because I had declared a short duration visit, or because I had answers for all of the other questions, but it could be that my fantasy profession is possibly more legit than my actual circumstances. 

I had some time to noodle on this issue between writing the first three paragraphs of this post, and publishing it. I didn’t have any grand epiphanies, it was more just wandering thoughts on self-evaluation, -redefinition, and -reinvention. My initial thought was that, since leaving my job behind last year, I’ve had to refine myself a bit, not only for interested parties like border officials, but also for myself. But I realized this isn’t really the case. Even though I worked for over ten, full-time years in the same company, I made a very conscious effort to never let my role there, or the company itself define me. I always wanted to be identified by everything else I did outside of work. But the job did give me a very convenient, and at the time, legitimate veneer. It worked great for passing borders and filling out apartment rental applications. But it was also almost completely artificial, and worse, allowed me to avoid the bigger and scarier challenge of pursuing other interests without the golden parachutes of steady income and free health insurance. (I must say though, I do value that job. Without it I wouldn’t be doing what I am right now, and I wouldn’t have met a lot of people who helped shape me into the better person I am today. I am fortunate and glad to have had it, and I am equally very relieved and happy that I let it go). Closing that door forced me to shed the veneer it gave me. And now that it’s gone, the only thing left is me. I don’t need to redefine myself, because I’ve been here all along. I just need to face up to being truthful about who I am and what I’m doing. That’s where all the introspection comes in, because this is not an easy thing to figure out. I was getting hung up on the word “define” for a few days; it implies identifying a limit, so I wasn’t particularly keen to apply it to myself, but then I decided that’s just semantically splitting hairs, I was wasting time, and moved on. What is clear is that now I have this great opportunity to constantly re-evaluate, reinvent, and adapt myself to whatever is happening, or whatever I choose. Sort of the equivalent of a liquid state, just of being instead of matter. It sounds obvious, but I’ve found it a little hard to shake off my desk jockey worker-bee mentality, and adjust to relatively complete freedom. I suppose I owe a little debt of gratitude to the landing card for prompting me to think about this. Maybe next time I’ll tell them I’m a “Writer.”