What you been up to?

I hate this question.

In every day conversation between friends, it's fine. But when people ask you that question, having not seen you in a while. People from school, etc. They're not asking, simply "What have you been up to today?" or even this week, they're asking "How successful have you been in life?"

This annoys me, because in the short time you have to answer the question, you can come across as a complete failure at life. "I'm still at home, I didn't go to university -- remember, I dropped out of school. I don't have a job."

Then there's the awkward silence, while they try and figure out how to skirt around that new-found knowledge. 

Fact is, yeah. I dropped out of school, that was for a mixture of reasons, intelligence certainly wasn't one of them. If I wanted to, I could have gone to college and worked to get qualifications there and then gone onto university. That was never an appealing idea to me though. When I was little, I never had a burning desire to be... anything. Kids usually want to be a vet, a doctor, something like that that. I didn't.

Why would I want to spend 4 years + studying something, when I don't know if it's something I really want to do? - Some people might claim "the experience" but I don't drink and have no desire to and when people talk about 'the experience' most of that experience involves being drunk.

I'm still at home, better yet, I'm still in the same home I have been for 22 years. I was born in the hospital and came home to this address. Currently, I live with my Mum and my Granny, before that my Granda too, but he died last year. Why haven't I moved out? Why haven't I got a job?

My Mum works, and to allow her to continue working, I stay at home and care for my Granny, who has dementia (and until he died, my Granda, who had Huntington's). Is it an easy thing to do? To me, it kind of is. I've grew up with my Granda getting progressively worse with Huntington's and over the past few years, I've seen my Granny go the same way - with my Granny is was harder, because it was a quicker decline, but still. You learn to live with it. People who don't see her every day, I'm sure, wouldn't be able to handle it in the same with I do and to a greater extent my Mum does.

Because of the way I've structured my life though, either by choice or not. I'm able to do things that most people with 9-5 jobs can't. I travelled to America by myself at the age of 19, when most people are starting their second year of University. A year later, I travelled across Europe, stopping off in Brussels, Paris, Rome and Venice with my friends and the year after that, I returned to Paris with Ryan, meeting up with people over there.

This year, if all goes to plan I could be going to the US not once, but twice.

I'll be 23 by then - Yeah, I don't have a job with promotion opportunities, I don't have my own accommodation, I'm not settling down, but why should I?

The problem with the question "What you been up to?" is that you don't have time to say all that. Which is why, I'm forced to open with "I'm a carer." - which, while true to an extent, the reason I say it is because it's really just a lot better than saying "nothing".

"Nothing" makes you sound like a failure and no-one wants that awkward silence.