This is me

This is me, I work on the web--though not in the conventional sense of designing or building websites. I'm a translator, and having access to the web is like having the world's biggest reference dictionary right at my fingertips.

I'm generally online from morning until night. I get up in the morning, flip on the espresso machine, check my emails, make a latte, and get down to work. My work is entirely digital: people send me documents by email, and I translate them and send them back. I do 99% of my research online, and I rather pride myself on my information sleuthing skills (I once considered being a research librarian because I love the thrill of finding things out).

I work from home and lead a fairly solitary professional existence, but I kind of like it that way. As a shy introvert, I'm well suited to being on my own a lot, and as a control freak, I like not having someone hanging over my shoulder and telling me what to do. That's not to say I don't enjoy company; I just need a lot of time on my own to recharge my batteries, as it were.

The web is extremely important to my life. When I'm working on my own, the web is my doorway to the wider world. I live far away from my family and many of my friends, so the web is my connection to them when I can't be with them in person. I love to cook, and the web is one gigantic cookbook and cooking school for me. I love to get crafty, and the web is like a knitting circle, a jewelry-making class and a craft show. I play bass in a band, and the web is a distribution outlet and a way of making contact with (potential) fans all over the world.

I attend a lot of web-related events, and I have a bit of a complex about not being "geeky" enough. I always think people must wonder what the heck I'm doing at this conference or that social gathering when I don't actually work in "the industry". When I meet new people at webby things, I often find myself almost apologizing for the fact that I'm a translator and not some web guru. But this is just insecurity on my part, because at all the web events I've attended, I've never, ever had anyone make me feel like I didn't belong. I love the diversity and enthusiasm of the web community, the interest in technology and the future, the passion for life in general, the desire to make things a little better for people everywhere.

On occasion, I've wondered what it would be like to get more involved in the nuts and bolts of actually creating the web instead of just using it. I've imagined getting into programming or trying my hand at design. But ultimately, my real passion lies with the written word, and I'm very happy doing the work that I do. And I guess as a blogger and Flickr-er and Twitter-er and website-translator and all-round web user, I'm playing my own part in making the web what it is.