hiding!

You know how it goes: when something particular is happening for you, you start to see it everywhere. The pregnant woman syndrome, the broken arm syndrome. This often extends to things I’m thinking about, too. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be myself, to really be myself, and I seem to see it pop up in things I read here and there, and I hear it in conversations — focused and overheard. I read a great line by Anne Lamott:  “So the real issue is how do we gently stop being who we aren’t? How do we relieve ourselves of the false fronts of people-pleasing and affectation, the obsessive need for power and security, the backpack of old pain, and the psychic Spanx that keeps us smaller and contained?” (I posted her full essay here, last month.)

It’s funny how just being who you are can be so bloody difficult. Of course we’re social animals and we have to bend and tweak ourselves to grease the social world that surrounds and helps create and support us. Of course. So I may love to sing showtunes at the top of my lungs at 4am (I don’t), but I live in a very crowded city, in an apartment building, and my neighbors wouldn’t appreciate that aspect of me (as I wouldn’t appreciate it in them), so I hum them softly at 4am and reserve my song-blasting for some other time and place. But that’s not what I mean, really. I’m really talking about how hard it can be to go ahead and relax into who you are and just be that. Hell, I’ll quit futzing around with the ‘you’ and ‘we’ and just say: It’s so hard just to relax into who I am, and then be that.

It’s not helped by the fact that part of who I am is [until now] an insecure person filled with self-doubts. I guess, to be accurate then, I’ve been being myself all my life! But underneath that, and coming increasingly to the surface, is the fullness of who I am, which I’ve kept tucked away under the pressure of being nice. It’s a particular problem for women, but for southern women in particular, it’s deadly. It struck me the other day that I’m so damn nice, always wanting to be nice, and it’s dull and boring. “Isn’t she so nice,” well who cares. Not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, of course, but when I think of the people I’m most crazy about, I feel that way because of the particulars of who they are. I like them because they say at least some version of what they think, they’re not shutting it up in order to be nice. So I might not always like what they say, or agree with it, but I very deeply like that they say it.

So here is my declaration of who I am, which I’m trying to face and relax into and be:

• I’m often outrageously exuberant. I can get really worked up over how great butter is, if I’m in the mood. Exuberance is often mocked by cynical people. Note to self: go ahead and let them!

• I’m an introvert and socially awkward (a) with strangers when we’re supposed to chat, and (b) when there are more than 2-3 people around. Parties are sheer agony for me. Extraverts don’t get this, and can be quite impossible to deal with on this topic, pushy and head-shaking, like what’s wrong with you. Note to self: smile at them and say what I think.

• Gratefully, I have more interests than time. I love architecture, art, music, theater, dance, travel, creativity of any kind (and people who are creative), books, poetry, writing, public readings and lectures on almost anything, and photography. But I can feel guilty about seeking out those things when I’m around someone who doesn’t have many interests, or who doesn’t share mine to a degree, and just let them go and not pursue them. Of course, this breeds resentment, not a good idea. Note to self: go ahead and pursue everything, life is short! If they’re left alone and not babysat, maybe they’ll need to find interests of their own, which will make them more interesting!

• I have a wide emotional bandwidth, as someone once said of me. I do of course usually live in the gray boring middle; working hours pass with not much more emotion than interest, boredom, restlessness, curiosity, things like that. I’m not in agony! ecstasy! most of the time. But I can sure go there. I feel things deeply and out to my fingertips. Joy is a very easy one for me; bliss is not rare; love and happiness, commonplace; sorrow is not rare; grief is not uncommon; despair, yeah, I’m quite familiar with it. People with a narrower bandwidth can find my range thoroughly exhausting. Note to self: It’s fine if they need a break from my experiences, that’s good for them and no skin off my nose.

• I’m not physically unattractive; my smile and open spirit make me more attractive than my actual features might be, otherwise. I’m fine, but not so attractive as to be threatening to anyone, so this one doesn’t get me into too much trouble with people.

• I’m thoughtful and smart and articulate. That one is even harder to say out loud than the previous one, which is mighty damn hard. (I talked about this a couple days ago.) I struggle with this one and am afraid to speak about things for fear of (a) being dumb, or (b) being rejected because no one likes the smart girl. Talk about a childhood mistake! So I’m trying to relax into this one and just be. Note to self: don’t be so afraid!

• I’m jealous and insecure, and suffer terribly because of it. I have a very critical and small side of my personality, which causes me to suffer a lot. Anne Lamott says we’re not punished for our sins, we’re punished by them, and see how smart that is?! These parts of me punish me terribly, and I’m always working on transforming them into something that feels better.

So there.

I haven’t uploaded any new photos in a couple of years; the ones that are in my current gallery were taken before I knew very much about taking pictures. I’d delete some of them now. There’s nothing spectacular about them, but what’s so confusing to me is that 91 people have paid for this image:

It’s a fine picture of red leaves, but (1) photos of red leaves are a dime a dozen and extremely easy to find, (2) for free. I don’t know why 91 people paid for this.

I use stockphoto sites when I’m trying to find images to use on jackets of the books I am publishing, so maybe it’s just people like me, people doing their work and needing a quick and simple resource.

Anyway, I guess this makes me a photographer. After my excessive rumination below, I guess this nagging issue is taken care of.

This morning I was reading through a ravelry forum about photography. One woman said something like “I am a photographer blah blah” and she gave a link to her work. I really love photography; I have favorite photographers, books about the philosophy of photography and how-to books; I have a folder of photos of favorite photographs. And I enjoy taking photographs. So I clicked the link to see her work and it was really not good at all. Very poor lighting, trite, poor quality of the images themselves, etc. And she is a

me and my camera

photographer. My photographs aren’t anything special, but they are considerably better than hers.

So my point is not to boast about my photographs, because I’m not doing that, but rather to think about the identity issue. I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to make those kinds of claims – it’s not as if it matters! I could walk around saying “I’m a writer,” “I’m a photographer,” “I’m a baker,” etc., and it would not make one bit of difference to the world or to anyone. But I can’t do it. I like to write, I like to take pictures, I like to make bread.  I see other people making the claim, and I’m always in a bit of awe at their self-confidence.

I can imagine possible reasons for my hesitation: it feels like bragging; it feels like I’m saying “I am a professional X” when I’m not, and if anyone looked at my ‘work’ that’s exactly what they’d think, that I’m full of myself, or lying in some way.  I think another aspect relates to my thoughts about writing and photography; books have always been extremely important to me, and I hold writers in very high esteem. They have a kind of exalted place in the world, to my mind. Photographers less so, but good photographers can transform people, understandings, even policy. To say “I am a writer” just feels impossible. Salman Rushdie is a writer. Cormac McCarthy is a writer. Victor Hugo is a writer. Jose Saramago is a writer. I am not Rushdie, or any of those.

I also think that saying “I am a” invites people to ask if they’ve seen/read your work. It implies public or professional acceptance and reward. At a party: “I’m a writer.” “Really, have I read anything of yours?” “No, I just like to write.” Clunk.

But that’s not what people mean when they casually claim these identities (I think). The ravelry woman is a photographer because she takes pictures. Maybe I just need to get over myself and quit over-thinking everything. I do have a tendency to do that. In psychology, there is a construct called “need for cognition,” the meaning of which is pretty obvious. People vary along a continuum in their need for cognition, and I’m way way way at the top of the scale. 99th percentile, I’d guess.