Picture-heavy, word-light

I have been trawling through old photos to put up on Instagram, but there lies the small problem - they are all old.

Being a latecomer, I need to fill up some sort of catalogue so it seems as if I do have a life of sorts which I would like to continue, but unless I show everyone what I had for dinner last night, I have to go back to the archives. I am treating it as a showcase for services offered, but I don't want to beat my nearest and dearest (who are kindly supporting me in the wilderness right now) over the head with stuff that has even less bearing on their lives than my dinners.

I made one extraordinary discovery. It seems that the people who know and (hopefully) love me the most - people who have been around me all their lives - have only just begun to understand what I have been doing for the last 45 years. 

I suppose I should have guessed it really, but when my grandchildren occasionally asked me how I spent my waking hours when I wasn't in the pub, they would glaze-over and go back to their phones. Ironically, they were probably catching up on their friends' dinners on Instagram and Facebook when they were supposed to be enjoying a dinner cooked by me.

I have spent a long time without measurable success to to find a single word that describes my work.  I begin to explain to a stranger who asks, and the first thing they say is, 'Ah, you are a stonemason.' I forgive them (for they know not what they do) but this, in my world, is a terrible insult.

I emphatically insist that I am not a stonemason, but then I sink into a mental mire - dragging them down with me - by using too many words in attempt to describe a world of which they have had no experience whatsoever. Like insurance companies, they want a single word such as 'teacher' or 'accountant', so I usually settle for 'sculptor' and let them walk away with the idea that I am a failed version of Henry Moore because they have never heard of me.

If I detect any sign of life in their eyes after I have made it easier by reducing my status to a single word, I complicate it again by qualifying it into several separate categories. I tell them that they must not think of me as a 'fine artist' (already they are suspecting that I am not as fine as they hoped I would be) but more of a sculptor in the traditional, 17th century meaning of the term. At this point they start to regret ever asking me. The best response I can expect by this time is, 'That must be very interesting'. It doesn't help when I tell them it is just a job which is probably no more interesting than theirs, before they walk away to talk to someone else. 

I suppose you could say that I am not very good at selling myself. Although I am quite good at using words, I have to use too many to describe my work. Pictures ought to do it better, which is why I am on Instagram.