I’m often called an artist by people who know me IRL, which annoys me for a bunch of reasons. One is that I don’t see myself this way. I just sometimes do stuff that is art-adjacent. Another is that making it a noun instead of a verb reduces me entirely to that one side of me and also suggests that it is something very stable, something that I’m going to be for the rest of my life, because well this is who I am after all. “I shoot photos”/“I make films”/“I write poetry”/“I write software” has a very different shade than “I’m a photographer”/“I’m a film maker“/“I’m a poet”/“I’m a software developer”. The latter feels very reductive.
You can view it as a label and the nice thing about labels versus boxes is you can have a bunch labels at once. Labels and identities are also temporary. Being something doesn't inherently mean you'll be that way forever. I say "I was a pilot" since I don't fly anymore, even though I still have the licenses. Someday it will be that "I was a software engineer". Someday it will be "I was alive".
Nice that you think in that way :-) I wonder though if what you look at as labels, many others treat instead like boxes?
F.ex. if they've classified you as a software engineer, then ... I'm thinking it doesn't occur to most people that you might be a writer and musician too hmm
I’m sure that happens. In lots of cases there’s nothing I can do about that. In many cases, an hour or two together is enough for people to drop that with me, personally. I’m pretty “boundary dissolving”.
What I don’t think will ever really work, though, is getting introduced as a software engineer and being annoyed at people for it. Or, even speaking up, “that’s something I do, it doesn’t define me”.
It’s pretty hard to convince people of stuff by telling them. It’s just about impossible to convince someone your are not contained by an identity when it seems to have such a tight hold on you.
I’m an awful interviewer, mostly in the sense that I just don’t do it. I certainly don’t give people the warm fuzzies by asking them questions that seem like I’m taking an interest in them.
What I do have going for me is a willingness and ability to bounce around between many different planes of reality and meet people on whichever one they choose (or that I can lure them too). The boundary dissolving is first internal, being willing to try many different things, be many different people. And never cast those old selves aside. Even if you throw out the tennis racket, don’t throw out the tennis player.
And when you talk with someone, feel around, see where you can meet them. And then meet them there, without preamble or apology. If you think they’re interested in tennis, just go into a conversation about it with the confidence of already being at a match together. This feeling out is also rooted in the present moment. I’ve probably asked someone “where did you go to school?” around three times in my life just to try it out, and was bored with myself before I finished the sentence. Can’t imagine asking “didja play any sports?”. But a game on the TV in the bar that someone is checking for the score is enough to see if we can meet there. Often we don’t, and that’s fine, too.
I still wonder if "He (or she) is a poet ... And a software developer" causes a conflict to arise in many people's brains. They want it simple, pick one?
Whilst "He writes software and poetry" doesn't? Or to a lesser extent?
Personally I say I build software, not that I'm a software eng :-). (And that I practice the guitar ... for real)
