I’m most fond of overachiever, planner, introvert, dog-lover, A-type, control freak, educated, blatantly honest…
The thought of writing these words down scares me. I’m cementing them into the digital world for all eternity. I’m telling you, how I feel about myself… There’s no taking them back now.
I don’t really know how I feel about these tags I give myself. If I’m honest though, I’ve given more thought to the way I tag posts in my blog than the words and labels I assign to myself.
I’m ever so quick to put myself in little boxes but I’ll be damned if I let you do that. HELL NO. Who do you think you are? I will not be labeled with your idea of who I am. I will not accept you thinking that you know who I am and what I stand for.
And yet – I’m constantly trying to do that to myself. As if answering the question “who am I really?” will change the very essence of self anyway.
Why do we do that?
Why do we put ourselves in little glass boxes? Neatly labeled for the world to see. Does it somehow allow us to cope with the world? So the others in their boxes and I can find each other and live in harmony together? Or perhaps so that we ourselves can understand the choices we make and the things we do?
Why do we choose the particular words that we choose?
Why don’t we favour friendlier, kinder, nicer words? Perhaps it’s the way we have been conditioned. Taught to be “humble” as if there is some kind of sin in being kind to oneself.
If we knew why we assign these particular words to ourselves, perhaps we would be kinder to ourselves.
How do you describe yourself?
I struggle with this. Alot! I cringe when I have to full it in somewhere or get asked it. I can describe who I am – a mother, a writer etc but anything deeper than that and I can’t!
Laura, it seems like it should be obvious but it often really isn’t. I totally get what you’re saying…. and sometimes even if we have the words “intelligent, beautiful etc” we struggle to use them out of some fear that someone else won’t agree and will judge us… my biggest challenge though is filling in “occupation”…. eeek… hate that label.
Honestly it is always so difficult to put yourself in a nutshell of words I do find apart from the obvious bio describing our circumstances, the rest changes at times – hopefully for thebest
It is really hard isn’t it. Since I’ve been a full time blogger I even struggle filling out forms in the Drs rooms… when it comes to occupation I pause for a minute before filling in “writer”… putting yourself in little boxes can be really tough!