realising i don't feel comfortable having an identity
Having recently joined bearblog, both as a writer and a keen reader of the discover page, I have become interested in the quote-unquote smallweb. Reflecting on how I brushed with it in the past, it became exposed to me that I don't feel comfortable having an identity. Here's how.
In the mid-noughties when I was growing up, a lot of my friends were on Bebo, the early social networking site. Whilst it wasn't strictly smallweb, it was the bridge between the primitive web of the nineties to the nasty platform-curated feeds that ended up eating it for breakfast. Bebo was big on personalision (skins, animations, etc), a place to display your identity and interact with others. I never joined myself, and later as a teen I continued to keep only a limited online identity, as my peers went onto curate tumblr pages and post Facebook statuses. Looking back, I think it was because I had an aversion to doing what everyone else was doing and I didn't feel like I had the identity required, nor did I know where to find one. I felt different to other people.
As a child, I was sporty, smart and funny, which made school pleasant enough, but made the adversity of feeling different less tangible, therefore harder to build an identity from. Although I was sporty, I was too awkward to fraternise with the sporty kids once we got too old to play football at lunchtimes. Although I was smart, I never shared the nerdy interests of the clever kids. Although I was funny, I was also quiet, fading into the background when in a group. As I got older, I felt more and more like I was existing without being perceived. An exhausting existence that has made more made sense to me recently, since learning more about the concept of masking (a popular term amongst us armchair self-diagnosed neurodivergents).
Many years later I'm still trying to figure the difference between the mask and what's behind it. Or if I've spent so long wearing masks, they can never come off, or worst still there's no longer anything to show behind them. I should have a strong identity: I'm lucky enough to live an active, fulfilling life. I have a good career and I keep myself busy outside it. I just struggle to talk eloquently about either, or derive a meaningful identity from either. If identity is the way one interacts with the world, the world and I have not become well acquainted yet.
I am trying to use my blog to carve out an identity for myself. Progress is slow and I'm okay with that. Right now, I'm comfortable saying that my identity is that I am different to other people. That's my starting point.