Ask Sandra Poczobut what she does for a living and she takes a deep breath. For the past five years, the answer has changed practically by the day.

Depending on the context, Poczobut (that’s pa-CHA-boot) has called herself an educator, a consultant, an artist or, in the warmer months, a partner in a pop-up food stand that makes the rounds at summer festivals.

“I tend to wear a lot of hats,” said the 34-year-old, whose defining characteristics include blunt blond bangs, a flare for red lipstick and an indefatigable optimism that’s evident in her answer to the question: What do you do?

“Usually my career has to have a kind of preamble to it. I think most people kind of go, ‘Oh, you’re doing lots of interesting things,’ but it’s a little harder for them to conceptualize how that would look.”

Indeed, keeping track of a career with many moving parts is no easy task.

When I first met Poczobut in late 2013, she was splitting her time between Toronto and Port Stanley, Ont., a quaint lakeside town about three hours away. With home-ownership in Toronto a pipedream, she and husband Paul Jenkins had taken the plunge in affordable southwestern Ontario a few months earlier. But after spending years building professional contacts in the city, Poczobut’s career consisted of a collage of contracts that required her to take on a hellish winter commute.