The Ego Trick (baggini, Julian) / quote 82 of 254
Not a character, just a mouthpiece for work
Nor did going to work require her to ‘get into character’, to become a different person. ‘It wasn’t really a character so much as just suppressing some things and bringing other things to the fore. It wasn’t really playing a character because it was me. I mean, I remember having a conversation with a client once about chemoinformatics – that’s definitely me. It’s a bit like when you’re giving a talk at a conference and you’re wearing something you wouldn’t normally wear: if you’re a girl you put on a bit more make-up than you would usually wear, and then you only talk of x. It’s like for that piece of time you’re just a mouthpiece for your work and everything else about you is just too much, you leave the rest of that at the door. To what extent do people just pretty much do that in their lives? On the way home, I’m going to stop at the corner shop and get some milk, I’m not going to then sit there and tell my life story to the person behind the counter and I don’t expect him to see me as anything other than a customer.’