My six-year-old asked me last week what I do for work.

I told her I’m a mathematician who solves problems for companies. That right now I’m helping an insurance company implement AI to lower their costs. I watched her eyes go flat before I even finished the sentence. My four-year-old, sitting to my left, had already mentally left the building.

I tried to recover. I told her that because of my work we have a nice house, good toys, a good life. She nodded. Polite. Unconvinced.

Then she said: “Mommy bakes cookies.”

I grew up watching men in suits move through airports. I didn’t know what they did. I just knew they looked important — the car, the clothes, the whole signal. That was the dream. Not a specific job. The aesthetic of one.

Thirteen years at a Big Four firm later, I have the title, the suit, the car. The dream, technically, delivered.

What I didn’t account for was having to explain it to a six-year-old.

There’s a famous documentary based on David Graeber’s work — Bullshit Jobs. The argument, roughly: a large share of white-collar work produces nothing of measurable social value. Teachers educate children. Doctors heal people. Architects build things you can point to. Consultants advise on AI implementation strategies for insurance carriers.

I’m not saying what I do produces nothing. But I can’t show it to my kids. I help a company lower its cost ratio by a few percentage points, and somewhere in that chain, that probably means something to someone. Probably.

My neighbor worked at a large tech company and burned out from what he described as meetings about meetings — people performing productivity without actually doing anything. He was the one who told me about Graeber. I laughed at the time.

I laugh less now.

Here’s what I kept thinking after the “Mommy bakes cookies” comment.

My wife’s micro bakery — which she runs from our kitchen, which my daughter understands completely, which produces something you can hold and taste — contributes roughly 0.1% of our household income. My abstract, unexplainable, socially ambiguous work covers the rest.

The house. The school. The toys. The ability to have a bakery at all.

Kids don’t care about that math. They care about what they can see. And what they can see is that mama makes something real, and papa goes to meetings.

I’m not having a career crisis. I’m not quitting to become a teacher.

But that moment at the table — her eyes going flat, his attention already gone, and then those three words — it landed somewhere I didn’t expect. Kids are the best bullshit detectors in the world. They haven’t learned yet to be polite about abstraction.

She didn’t ask what I earn. She asked what I do. And I didn’t have an answer that worked.

The dream I had at airports wasn’t really about the work. It was about the signal. The look of importance. I spent thirteen years building a career around a feeling I had at age eight watching strangers move through terminals.

That’s worth sitting with for a while.

One of the reasons financial independence matters to me isn’t just the number. It’s that question my daughter asked.

I want the next chapter to be something I can explain. Something I can point to. I want my kids to ask what I do and actually get an answer.

If that thought hit you somewhere — forward this to one person who’d get it.

Let's go — if you want to see a Daddy On Fire.