If not work, then what?

I had a conversation with my carpool passenger last night about the problem of defining yourself through your work.  The only reliable conversation starter we have that seems to work in any situation in which we find ourselves is "So ... what do you do?"  (Allow me to make explicit what is implicit in this conversation:  we require a plan for social interactions.)  There are two big problems with this opener.

First, I probably will find the answer to be terribly boring.  I'm convinced that my own work is boring to other people, and I try never to speak of it.  The flip side of this is that I find the work of most other people to be pretty boring, too ... and I try never to speak of it.  So nine times out of ten, I don't really care what a person does; I'm just resorting to asking that question because I don't have anything else.

Second (and related), I don't really think that you learn much about a person from the answer.  Some people, yes, their job will define them.  If you're the President, you don't get to say "Sure, I'm the President, but what I really am is a model airplane enthusiast with a day job."  Being the President pretty much tells people everything they need to know.  Even if you're not the President, let's say you're a doctor: that's pretty defining right there.  But those of us who are basically generic office workers of some sort, even if we happen to work, say, "in politics" (as people insist on inaccurately labeling what I do and then proceed to assume that it's much more interesting than it is), we just don't have the same self-definitional power in our job descriptions.

"What do you do?"  "Oh, you know, the usual.  I sit in front of a computer.  I use the phone.  I have meetings sometimes."  Like I said: boring and not very telling about who you are or what you like.

Beyond that, though, there's this bigger issue: I don't want to be one of those people who draws the meaning of his life through his work, because fundamentally I don't view my work as being all that important.  The work may be stimulating (at times), and it may even orbit around something that is important (policy making), but my actual job is pretty far from the policy-making part and tends to be routine.  So I don't want to defined by something that I view, when you really get down to it, as basically disposable.  That may change over time.  (Theorem: as one's job approaches 100% leadership, one's ability to convey information to others via your job title increases.  Examples: CEO, president, executive director, head of surgery, chef.  Thoughts?)

I may be in a constant state of failure in this regard, but I want to be someone whose meaning is derived from his human relationships and the things that he actually finds interesting, not just the thing he does for money. (And yes, I do realize that some people genuinely find interesting that which they do for money.)  I'd like to treat other people with the same respect, conversationally and otherwise.

But how to operationalize this?