“Tell me a little bit about yourself.”
Chances are, at some point in your life, you've been faced with that daunting statement. Maybe in a job interview, on a blind date, or simply meeting a person for the first time. If you're like me, you hate that question, because it's not really a question, is it? It's a command, an imperative, and one that doesn't lend itself to easy response. How are you supposed to respond to something like that? What do you tell, what do you keep private?
It's not really that horrible of a question, of course, but it does bring up a mini identity crisis of sorts. How you answer this question tells people how you define yourself – what is important to you. So do you tell people about your job? Your kids? Your army of cats? Your huge collection of Star Wars memorabilia? The real question they're asking isn't about getting to know you better – it's about your identity – you you define yourself.
Identity is a topic I've been thinking about quite a bit for the past month or so. My NaNoWriMo (go here: www.nanowrimo.org to learn more) novel this year was all about identity. In my (still untitled) novel, the protagonist, Shannon Sparrow, stirs up major controversy in her small Kansas town when she comes out as a lesbian at the start of her senior year of high school. Shannon struggles with her changing identity – or, at least, what her classmates view as her identity. For Shannon, being a lesbian is part of who she is, but it's not everything that defines her. She's editor of the school newspaper, gets good grades, babies her cat, Sargent Pickles, and can't wait to get out of Kansas for college. If asked to talk about herself, she wouldn't define herself as a lesbian, anymore than I lead all my introductions with “I'm Erinn, and I like men.”
But Shannon does struggle with her identity throughout the course of the novel. She doesn't want to be an activist for the LGBT community, but it happens anyway. She struggles with wanting to just be a normal teenager and needing to stand up for herself against the discrimination and hatred she faces. Shannon has to redefine how she sees herself, because her classmates have redefined how they see her.
When I made identity a central issue in my novel, I didn't really realize it was also an important issue to me. My whole life, I've defined myself by what I do. In high school, I defined myself as a robotics team member and softball player. In college, I was the Wildlife and English major who volunteered at the zoo. And now, I'm the Education Curator at Tanganyika. It's never been about who I am as a person – I've always based my identity around the things I do.
We all define ourselves by our activities to an extent, I think. What's one of the first questions you ask when you meet someone? “What do you do?” We want to know about each others activities, because our work, hobbies, etc tell us about a person. You can learn what a person values by finding out what they do with their time. It's not polite to lead a conversation by asking about someone's deeply held beliefs, especially if you don't know a person well. I know how my close friends feel about tons of hot-button issues, but that's not how our friendships started. Friendship should be based on core values – shared or at least a respect for differences – but that takes time.
But who am I, really? I work very, very hard. I put in tons of hours, bring my work home with me, and often have time for little else besides work, dinner, and bed. This past season, I had perhaps five or six weekends (Saturday and Sunday) off of work – and two of those were vacation weekends I specifically took off. I had fewer than a dozen weeks with two full days off. More often than not, I would have one or no days off in a week. I think my longest stretch without a full day off was something like 50 days. I work very hard to be good at my job, so it's naturally a huge part of who I am.
But if you took away my job, what would I be? How would I describe myself? There are things I like to do, to be sure, when I have time for them. I love to read (as evidenced by this blog), write (as evidenced by NaNoWriMo), and bake. I'm not as up to date as I'd like to be on updating this blog, but I feel like I never have interesting things to say. Or, to put it another way, I don't feel like anyone cares. Not true, I'm sure, since I do get page views, but I need more motivation than that.
So I made a vow/resolution type thing to myself this week: I'm going to do more things that I like. That shouldn't have to be something you resolve to do. It should just happen naturally. But for me, it doesn't Justin always says that I don't know how to relax, and that's completely true. I've spent all day feeling uncomfortable because I don't have any obligations. Pumpkins is over, NaNo is done for the year, and I didn't have anywhere to be. But I had a hard time just sitting on the couch, watching TV, and reading. That's supposed to be easy.
Anyway, part of this “doing things I like” kick I'm on involves updating this blog a lot more often. So, let me know in the comments if there's anything in particular (literary-related or not) that you'd like me to discuss. Another part of this plan involves another blog I started: Pearl's Sweet Treats (http://pearlssweettreats.blogspot.com/). If you're so inclined, feel free to head over there and follow my adventures in baking.
So, dear readers, I'll leave with a question: How do you define yourself? What is your identity?
Mischief managed,
Slim Pearl Silver-Feather
