Back Doors and Side Doors

So many people I know must feel like this. I know I do:

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.

It’s because I’m getting older, I imagine, meeting regular people (with careers) who ask about me (who has none). It started at radio, went into marketing, and now it’s developing communities online (I just picked up this Harry Potter forum, for example). Who knows what it’ll be next, but I really feel like, more and more, I just have to lie, or simplify it to one thing, which is impossible. It’s like Cory Doctorow said in Eastern Standard Tribe:

I’ve spent my life going in the back door and coming out the side door. That’s the way it is now. When it only takes two years for your job to morph into something that would have been unimaginable twenty-four months before, it’s not really practical to go in through the front door. Not really practical to get the degree, the certification, the appropriate experience. I mean, even if you went back to university, the major you’d need by the time you graduated would be in a subject that hadn’t been invented when you enrolled. So I’m good at back doors and side doors.

One thing’s fore sure: my boredom problem is definitely solved. 🙂