Last week I visited my optometrist to check if I should put my habitual squinting down to my general shiftiness or worsening eyesight, and learnt a valuable lesson at the same time.

As he was putting my eyes through their paces he asked what I did for a living. I paused before answering. I always do.

"I'm a writer." No matter how it comes out of my mouth, it sounds wrong — pretentious, affected. Funny, because the tradition of turning a verb into a noun by adding -er to create a single-word job title is now mostly considered the opposite of wankerish: a little bit passe.

Although we still call people who teach teachers (not learning facilitators), people who weld welders (not material amalgamation consultants) and people who lay bricks bricklayers (not domicile component synergisers), in the main we eschew these "all-too-simple" job titles, considering them inadequate for our post-industrial, never-that-straightforward economy.

I think that's nonsense, and yet telling people "I'm a writer" fills me with trepidation. But last week I did it.

Instead of replying with "well, la di da" or muttering "tosser" under his breath, my optometrist asked me who I wrote for. I told him. He revealed that he'd subscribed to The Age for 35 years and what followed was a jolly old chat and a kind offer to bulk bill me for a service I wasn't eligible to be bulk-billed for.

Would it have gone the same way if I'd described myself as a content optimiser or a written language engineer? Absolutely not. It reminded me that when it comes to vocation descriptions, wank is in the eye of the beholder.

Jonathan Rivett is a digital format whimsical verbiagist at haught.com.au