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Searching for Me

03 Mar 2022

I search so hard for some “activity” to tie my identity close with. I want so bad to simply explain myself by: “I’m a X”. Where X is something I actually like, and don’t mind being completely associated with. Of course, I can already do this, but there’s nothing currently that I can say (without of course stretching the truth). For example, I could say I’m a programmer. But I don’t like that, I don’t want to be a programmer (be in the most philosophical sense. Of course being a programmer is great for work). I want to say “I’m an artist”, but to what body of work can I point to?

So I search. And search and search and search. It’s a complex mix of excitement, frustration, and ultimately ends in hopelessness, when I “realize” that “I’m not actually X”. That last feeling is the dangerous (and unfortunately unfounded) one, that leads me to stop. Unfortunately, this seemingly inevitable cycle leads me to be scared of starting things. (Since, of course, “giving up == failure” (spoiler: it’s not failure)) (Aside: I wonder what I’m searching for here – personal enjoyment? external validation? What would I need to continue?)

But we should get real here: I will not be satisfied with any X to completely encapsulate my identity. It will be and always be impossible to define an entire human’s identity (who they are, what they stand for, all of their life experiences) in something as simple as that. No one will truly get me, even if I’m something cool like an “artist”, “musician”, “pro-gamer streamer dude”, "indie game dev". And if I can be described as something cool like that, wouldn’t I just also want to show that I’m… more than just that?

So why can’t “I” in the most holistic sense, (ie my demeanor, my physical appearance, my attitude, my voice, my actions, my decisions…) be what defines me? Well it can. Why search for some label? Cause maybe I want people who don’t know me to know me as “cool”, without having to actually get to know me and come to the conclusion themselves that “this guy is cool.”

All roads lead to external validation huh. Even when searching for who I am.