Odd jobs

[Note: I posted an excerpt of this on kottke.org, but didn't want to include the rest of it, so here's the whole thing.]

Heather Armstrong, on meeting her new neighbors and having to explain what she does for a living:

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.

This is the exact interaction I have with most people that I've met in the past couple of years, right down to the "we're web developers, we say, and that is never enough, they just can't leave it alone" part. I imagine professional mimes, phone sex operators, and people that make a living selling other people's stuff on eBay have the same sorts of awkward conversations with their new neighbors.

The expanded version of this dreaded conversation is:

Them: "So, what do you do?"
Me: "I'm, uh, a web developer. I built web sites, I guess."
Them: Some variation of "What company do you work for?" or "What project are you working on now?"
Me: "I work for myself on my own projects."
Them: [Blink, blink.]

At this point, they start using the Errol Morris technique of not saying anything so that the other person will talk to fill the lull in the conversation, which I always do because I'm already so on-edge and feeling awkward about the whole deal.

Me: "I have this web site that I do more or less full-time. It's a blog."

Thankfully, most people have heard of blogs at this point, even at family gatherings and such.

Them: "Oh, a blog. That's nice."
Them: [A long pause as they steel themselves to ask a potentially impolite question about money.]
Them: "So.....how do you make money doing that?"
Me: "Advertising. There's a small ad on every page on the site. And that's enough to pay the bills."
Them: "Oh, I see. So what is this site about?"

This is where my story and Heather's start to diverge. "I write about my experiences as a mom" is pretty straightforward, but I still don't have an elevator pitch for kottke.org. There are a set of topics that I cover regularly, but not with any sort of completeness or authority. This adds to my uncomfort.

I have only one trump card in this conversation, the thing that convinces most people that I'm not a) pulling their leg or b) wasting my life by not working a job that makes sense or requires wearing khakis, but I need to wait for the magic question before I play it: "Do you know how many people read your site?" The answer -- that hundreds of thousands of people read my site each month -- while quite low on the list of reasons why I do kottke.org, has an arresting effect on the questioner. The result is usually a respectful detente or a barrage of questions that is less awkward for me because we're suddenly on a more equal conversational footing regarding the topic...we now both believe that what I do has some merit to someone other than me.