“So, how’s the job search?”

The dreaded words.  Enough to make me stab my own eyeball with a plastic spoon.
When you’re unemployed, this seems to be all that anyone wants to know. Why does it suddenly seem the sun, the moon, the stars – the solar-system itself revolves around the status of your venerated job-search?  Here’s something nutty.  What if you’re NOT looking for a job?  What if you aspire to CREATE your OWN job instead? (Crazytalk! I know!)   My few delicate attempts to broach this fragile terrain nearly incited a riot.    Family, friends, coffee baristas… everyone I know seems to reflexively tailspin into a frenzied panic at the mere mention of what you’d think was pure non-conformist heresy.  So,  how DO you cop to having entrepreneurial aspirations, should you happen to have them?  Should you mention them at all?