How do we define ourselves?
I’ve only just started thinking about this. How do I define myself? Is that even important?
In some regard, I think that how I define myself means nothing. My self-definition doesn’t make me any more or less real. I am who I am. On the other hand, how I define myself is all there is.
There are the obvious definitions: Wife, mother, sister, daughter.
There are painful definitions: My son’s drug addiction, Party to multiple failed marriages, disgruntled cubicle dweller, fat girl. Not quite so fat girl. Fat girl again. It’s never ending.
I’m also a friend. A person could do far worse than me in the friend department. I’m extremely low maintenance. Unless we’re talking about the friendship I have with Randy. I might be a little more high maintenance when it comes to Randy, but he is too..so we’re even.
I have a friend at work who I spend my days passing instant messages back and forth. I love instant message, it’s the modern day version of passing folded up notes in class, without the middle man and the teacher intercepting them.
I’ve got a few decades on her, so I’ve had years to gather more information than she has. She uses her instant message box as Google. She calls me Michellipedia.
She waffles between being annoyed with me for not knowing the answer to a question and knowing the answer to a question.
I see this all the time: Why would you even know that?
It occurs to me that I have spent far too little time fucking with her. I should start making shit up and seeing how far I can get.
On the other hand, I was served a steady diet of misinformation as a child and it took years to cycle through it all. I’m not even sure I’m finished yet. I don’t want to do that do another person, even if it is funny.
Although, if it’s really funny, I kind of have to.
In the meantime, I will continue to hone my Michellipedia skills and be extremely grateful that I have a friend at work that helps me get through my boring and frustrating days.
Getting back to the original thought (I’m all over the place here) How do y’all define yourselves? Does it matter?
More importantly:
What do you guys do to get through the days when you’d rather be anywhere but work? And don’t say work. I already know about that one.
Boy that’s a loaded question…. the defining me one. The work one is easy! Make every attempt to find the end of the internet of course!
I have been trying to figure out lately what “defines” me and as many times as I tell myself it doesn’t matter, it still does to me. Guess I have to just keep working to be my best… no matter what that is.
Hahah…the end of the internet. Here’s to hoping we never find it!
Generally I daydream through the tedious stuff. I’m getting better at focusing but I still find myself left with stuff I just don’t want to do and a deadline…so I daydream while I do it.
ohhh..yes…daydreams. I’ve spent a lot of my life there.
Read other people’s blogs, mostly. 🙂
Yes…I do a LOT of that. It’s so awesome. I’m such a voyeur, so personal blogs are like crack to me.
I guess I’ve never really thought about how I define myself. I am things… I’m a girl, a friend, a partner….. But as for who I am? I guess I’m an awkward nerd. It’s not the most graceful creature to be, but I like to think I contribute something to the world in my own way.
And when I’d rather be anywhere else than work, I have a few corners of the internet I run to. Jezebel.com is one. Imgur.com is another.
Sometimes I sit waiting for someone to comment on my blog. That the best thing that can happen on a slow work day. I love talking to my blogger buddies.
That is a fucking highlight, right? And I love awkward nerds…awkward nerds might be my favorite people on the planet. I get them.
I’m too lazy to even contemplate defining myself today. As to entertaining myself at work – I work from home, so I read blogs, eat too much, smoke way too much, think about cleaning, repeat.
hahahaha…that sounds very much like my weekends. 🙂
I don’t waste time trying to define myself. It doesn’t matter. They are just labels, and labels are arbitrary and generally worthless. (imho.)
Re how do I spend work time when I don’t want to or don’t need to work? Why blogging, of course! And six months a year, hitting refresh on rotoworld.com to improve my fantasy football team. (and I’m a 62 year old woman. LOL) And-much as I want to break free-Facebook. Playing slotomania or bejeweled is just too difficult to hide in cubicleland.
You make a good point on the labels.
And awesome on the fantasy football thingy…I’m still waiting for a fantasy makeup league.
I have no idea how to define myself and I don’t think I’ve ever tried. Don’t think I want to as the answer would probably be too painful.
I haven’t had too much experience in the soul sucking corporate world of work, being a pro musician . On the rare occasions I’ve had to attempt to fit into that alien landscape I’ve been somewhere else in my head, all the time. I can manage to do the most boring job in the world well, whilst being mentally totally absent from the premises! Works most of the time until someone wants to have team building sessions and expects enthusiasm or interest. For me to even be able to feign a vague interest in that kind of psycho babble nonsense I would need to be a major shareholder or at the very least getting a very large annual bonus!
Haha.
Yeah, fuck the team building exercises. You can’t have a totally dysfunctional and fragmented team and expect to fix it by playing games for a few hours a year. It’s stupid. I’d rather spend that time surfing the internet.
Well, I’m blessed to be able to work at home…so if I don’t feel like working, I just…get up and go do some laundry (yay, me). Or I stealthily open my blog reading list and vicariously live online while accomplishing exactly nothing.
I have so many different facets that I’m like an all-inclusive encyclopedia of self definitions. I think we probably all are. Sometimes I’m any one of these, or all of them: Superwoman and smart/organized businesswoman with all to-do lists checked off; lazy housewife who spent the day knitting; prior quasi-famous cake decorator who quit the biz and lost her identity and business friends (and her status car, ouch) but gained her freedom; English history biography geek; iffy blog writer; baker; keeper of the family history; mother-who-all-your-friends-think-rocks; wife in sweats with no shower who should work out more; sexy wife who had too much vodka after dinner; high-heeled shoe collector who lives like a barefoot tomboy; sister to an recovered drug addict; daughter of divorced parents and one alcoholic narcissist; ex-hippie outcast shy kid turned 80s valley girl; artist; softy who cries at movies; snarky hard-nose type A bitch who has the right answer for everything (AFTER the fact); true-blue loyal friend; that sports mom who brings treats for everyone; and daydreamy gardener/homesteader who will sit for hours and ponder the mystery and wonder of owning land and growing things. All those things are me, and then some, and I guess I need them all.
Since I can go through many of these faces in the course of ONE day–It keeps my husband on his toes, I’m pretty sure. Didn’t Alanis Morisette have a song like that.. ? lol
And you should totally mess with your work friend. Just a little bit, now and then, to keep things fun.
Can you tell, today I’m the ‘bored, sitting at my desk screwing around when I should be working on taxes and filing and office-y things’ person?
Totally crushing on your right now and all your wonderful self definitions!!
Thanks Michelle–I love reading your blog because you always make me think. It was interesting to write those down and read them back to myself.
So, add ‘kickass blogging self-awareness guru’ to your own list… 😀
I have friends who call me Mary Dictionary because my brain is crammed full of the most random crap. It all adds to the chaos up there!
Hah…yep..I get that. Of course, I can’t remember shit that is actually helpful.
At work, serious people have actually asked if i were a robot.
a different individual asked once, “are you human?” So i don’t worry much about defining myself – other people do it. All I am sure of is that I am curious, smart, funny. and i was that way 55 years ago. At least I am somewhat stable.
Somewhat stable is good. 🙂
Robot, huh? You should have said yes…yes I am..the face eating kind. Now go away.
On the “Why would you even know that?” front:
When I was in acute rehab recovering from my stroke, my main physical therapist was trying to explain to me what I was up against in neurological terms. He told me that there was a place in the brain where all of the sensory input from the nervous system was routed through one piece of tissue on its way to the places in the brain that process those signals. I said ” Oh yeah, the homunculus”. He said why do you know what a homunculus is? I said why wouldn’t I know what one was; it’s literally the place where the mind interfaces with the outside world.
He said OK then, what we have to do is try to teach yours that there is still a left side to your body. Apparently my nerdy tendencies were quite helpful there, my stubborn ones not so much.
So I guess the self-definition that feels the truest to me is that I’m still pushing back against the limiting definitions of my disability in whatever ways I can after almost 6 years. That sounds kind of vague, but the details are boring. I will also say this: If you do or plan on doing anything that’s both physically and mentally stressful, have your blood pressure checked. I had no idea mine had elevated dangerously, and I really should have known.
I never had a lot of idle time at the jobs I’ve had, but I remember during the slow times at my first warehouse job when I was 17 we used to sneak out on the loading dock and get loaded…
Dude, that is REALLY good advice. And our stubborn self very often kicks us in the ass..it sounds like yours did with a vengeance. Here’s to hoping you keep maing those strides. 🙂
see?? Im so weirdwackytired I love my comment wondering if DOUG is in MY oakland??
He could be! And I adore your brand of weirdwackytired. 🙂
Man… what a question. How to label myself? I’m lacking in “obvious” answers. I don’t like “survivor,” not at all. Ummm… storyteller? Mocker of life? This is a question for the ages.
And! I get through my workdays with Buzzfeed. Hours and hours of buzzfeed and/or digging in weird abandoned closets.
Yes! Buzzfeed and cracked articles.
I find that I define myself after the fact. When I quit working in radio after 16 years, I was lost. I had no idea who I was or what I was supposed to be doing. I didn’t realize until that moment that I had defined myself as a “radio announcer.” I imagine the same would be true if I lost my husband, or when my children all leave home — because while I don’t necessarily define myself consciously as a wife or mother — I tend to think deep down inside, those identities are an intrinsic part of my soul.
As for work – I read blogs or use my free time to work on my freelance writing. I TRY to do this stuff when I’m “taking a break” — but often I’ll look up and realize an hour or two has gone by.
A take a break from my writing to get a little work done. But honestly, I haven’t had a raise in 5 years and I am completely undervalued by my boss…I ceased feeling guilty about it months ago.