It was the greatest compliment then the biggest slap in the face. The Associated Press found one of my Open Salon blogs and called me for an interview about pandemics and technology.

Wow! The Associated Press found me – here – on Open Salon. That’s amazing. I talked to the reporter for about 45 minutes, knowing there was a chance what I said would never even make it to the article.

That’s the way it works in the media. Not every source gets used, and at the 11^th hour, inches get cut. I know, because I’ve worked in a newsroom for most of my life. And that’s what the AP stole from me – my work in a newsroom, my title as an editor with a daily newspaper.

I’m quoted as “a 45-year-old blogger from Rutherford, N.J.” The reporter used a few lines directly from my blog, and paraphrased a few words of our lengthy interview. But she left out the most important part: that I was an editor.

Does it matter? No, not really. But it made me think how much my job, what I do, defines who I am. I never thought my work defined me; not a bit. It was a topic I’d actually given some thought to just the day before the article hit: How do I define myself?

The conversation followed a cheesy movie, “Confessions of a Shopaholic,” that had an underlying theme of defining yourself without labels, without things. Of course I was defined by the people I cared about most. Everyone is, right? Even the President of United States would probably say he’s defined by his family; he calls staff meetings short for his daughter’s recitals and leaves the White House at 6 p.m. for dinner.

But to have my work taken away from me in black and white, so officially by the AP, caused me to pause. That article would appear in hundreds of papers and websites across the U.S. and everyone would think I was just a middle aged blogger.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I am, after all, a middle aged blogger and that’s exactly how the AP found me. I’ve had a lot of success as a blogger, but none that’s come in the way of money.

My job as an editor -- the fact that someone else is willing to pay me, means that I’m sufficiently good enough. It's a distinguisher. And as much as blogs, tweets and youtube are changing the direction of news – even dictating what is news – there’s little or no money in it. I blog, tweet and tube, but it’s for the greater good of keeping my paycheck.

But there’s an absolute danger in caring too much – allowing myself to be defined – by my job title or career. It could all go away in an instant, as so many people painfully experienced in the past two years. I survived a few cuts, but there are more in the air hanging like humidity in August.

If I lost my job tomorrow, I’d still write, and I’d still blog. So I suppose the “45-year-old blogger” description is dead-on. For writers, blogs are the best thing to happen since the delete key. There’s an instant avenue for the chatter in our heads, a way to practice our craft, get feedback, gather ideas. And it might lead to something.

Like an interview with the Associated Press.