It’s funny how one of the most-asked questions when you meet someone regards your employment. For some reason, nobody goes around asking people “what’s your favorite color” or “what is your favorite thing to do on a rainy afternoon.” (Though those questions could come off as creepy, I now see.) Instead, the question that always gets asked upon meeting someone new is, “so what do you do?”

I’ve always had a bit of a problem explaining my career to people — especially to my dad’s friends, to whom the only acceptable professions are engineer, doctor, lawyer, or accountant — but I never realized just how tricky it was until I came across Heather Armstrong’s post on her similar troubles:

Over the last few weeks several neighbors have stopped by to introduce themselves, and invariably they are older than we are, more established, and have careers in medicine or law. And when they ask what we do, both Jon and I sort of flinch and exchange a quick look that says IT’S YOUR TURN TO LIE. We’re web developers, we say, and that is never enough, they just can’t leave it alone, and one of us will try to explain that I have a website. This thing. That I do. And because we’re being all coy about it I just know, from the very worried expressions on their faces, that these neighbors think that we run a porn site.

Now, unlike Heather, my website is not my career (I’m definitely not close to being that popular), but I do make a living doing “stuff” on the web, and I’ve always had difficulty in describing to other people — and sometimes, to myself — what it is exactly that I do. So here’s my feeble attempt:

My current employment is working with content on the web. Within that framework, my expertise (and current work) lies in two domains: content design and content conception. In the domain of content design, I currently work in interaction design and information architecture, building the backbone for the effective presentation of content on the web. In the domain of content conception, I currently work in creating strategy (PR-related) for clients in order to make sure their message gets delivered accurately, and also do a fair bit of writing and editing of web copy as well.

Wow, that was a mouthful. The problem is, while many of those terms might be standard for some of you, many of the people I speak to draw a blank. So the explanation turns into a multi-paragraph essay, or I just resort to the easy cop-out: I’m a web-writer. Easier that way, I guess.