identity

Hello there! It’s been almost three years. Whoops! But I’m back with some thoughts to share tonight, and how I’ve found myself back on the blog on this particular night.

In my last post, I admitted that I would be deprioritizing this blog. See, up until then, I viewed Scripted Journal as one of my many side projects. This categorization in my brain made me feel like it was perpetually unfinished. I believed that until my blog’s ultimate goal was reached, I had an obligation to at least consider posting something soon. What’s the goal of this blog, you might ask? Beats me. Perhaps at some point, it was to become really popular. I’ve been sharing my thoughts on the internet for over a decade now (!), and I’ve had various goals along the way.

So, as you might recall, I mentioned that I would only post when I had something I thought was truly worth sharing. Despite what the time gap between then and now might suggest, there have been several post-worthy experiences in my life these past three years! While I’d love to dive into them, I’ll save those stories for future posts.

I’ll start with what’s on my mind right now. Although my previous post actually happened a couple of months after the fact, I officially began my career as a Software Developer! And despite my love-hate relationship with academia, I’ve also gone back to school part-time this fall to pursue a Master’s in Artificial Intelligence while working full-time.

Needless to say, while my schedule has been very full, it has been nevertheless incredibly rewarding. Those who know me personally are aware that I’ve become somewhat of a workaholic in these past three years. I make an effort to avoid getting completely burnt out. Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith has a fantastic book I browse through occasionally that discusses the different types of rest our bodies need (beyond just sleep) to make sure we are totally recharged. It has helped me a lot, and scheduling intentional times of rest has helped in ensuring that I’m not an irritated zombie all the time. My main “problem,” if you can even call it that, is that I genuinely love what I do. I mean it. I love working. If it weren’t for my loved ones, you’d find me blissfully hacking into the night on most days.

Doesn’t really sounds like a problem, right? “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life,” as they say. Well, an unfortunate side effect is that my career has become a significant part of my identity as of late.

If you’re still reading and wondering how this relates to the reason I decided to make a blog post for the first time in three years, I promise this will make sense soon.

I saw a video a few weeks ago that really made me stop and reflect. I wish I could find it to link here but it went something like this: The person in the video poses a simple question to the viewer – who are you? Introduce yourself to someone who knows nothing about you. They pause for an answer from the viewer. Of course I had an answer immediately.

“I’m Silver. I’m a Software Developer who loves weightlifting, writing, being active, playing video games, and I’m very confident in my Tetris skills.”

Then the person in the video asks the question again, but instructs you to remove any references to your career, your hobbies and anything that you “do”. Then introduce yourself again.

As you might imagine it took me a few moments to prepare an answer. What really got me was how my first answer was solely comprised of what I “do”. In all honesty, even the answer I wrote here was a little editorialized. Initially, I just responded with what my job was as the whole introduction. This triggered some reflection in me.

Between work (and now school) my free time consists primarily of spending time with family, friends and people I love. Any other time is spent resting to ensure I can be as present as possible for everyone in my life. The rare moments I have beyond that are often used to catch up the latest video game or show I’ve missed. The even rarer times I have after all of the above are satisfied, I use for my side projects. I use my Google Calendar religiously, and I take great pride in what I am able to accomplish in a given week. I could dedicate a post to that alone, but I digress.

My creative pursuits are the things that nourish me. Yet, the opportunities I give myself to pursue them are few and far in between. I have these competing desires now. While I’m grateful that the thing I need to do for 40 hours a week, is something I genuinely enjoy doing, it’s also become part of the problem.

One of my many creative pursuits happens to be app development. When I do find the time to work on projects, most of the time, it involves starting or continuing some sort of app.

Today happened to be one of those rare days when I had nothing on my schedule. In fact, I planned it that way. By working diligently to get ahead in my classes, work, and other responsibilities for the next week, I managed to free up an entire day just for myself. It was also raining heavily, which kept me indoors. It seemed like the perfect day to hack together a concept for an app idea that had been buzzing excitedly in my head for a while now. But when I opened my laptop, I realized I was still in the middle of updating my personal portfolio website. Another mini project that I’d been meaning to tackle. I like to keep it up-to-date and snazzy.

So, I found myself torn between this creative endeavor I wanted to pursue and this other, more career-related task that I also wanted to complete. Uh-oh.

Working on my portfolio website would have a more immediate and tangible return on my time. It would make me more competitive for future job opportunities. Most importantly, I could finish it within a few hours. On the other hand, my app was still ill-defined at this point, likely needed some dependency updates and troubleshooting before I could even start working on it, and, most importantly, I could work on it all day and still be nowhere near completing it. But it was the kind of soul-nourishing thing I desperately needed. I honestly sat at my desk for a while before eventually conceding to work on my portfolio for tonight.

I logged onto the provider for all my websites. Of course, Scripted Journal popped up. It’s not the first time I hopped onto the blog in these past few years, but my eyes immediately gravitated to that last blog post. Suddenly, I knew what I’d be doing tonight.

On this rainy Sunday evening, as I searched for something to fill my cup with, I somehow found myself on this blog. That internal struggle on how to spend my time tonight turned into words almost right away. And the earlier question of identity began surfacing in my mind. I think I realized that the power of blogging is that when you do it earnestly, it’s frankly your identity reflected back at you. All of these thoughts were things that were just swirling in my mind until I put them down on digital canvas. It was only until I expressed them, expressed how I felt about them, and considered the meaning of that expression that I learned what that means about myself. And for tonight at least, it ended up being just what I needed

On this rainy Sunday evening, as I searched for something to fill my cup, I somehow found myself on this blog. That internal struggle over how to spend my time turned into words almost right away. And the earlier question of identity began surfacing in my mind. I think I realized that the power of blogging is that when you do it earnestly, it’s your identity reflected back at you. All these thoughts were just swirling in my mind until I put them down on the digital canvas. It was only after I expressed them, shared how I felt about them, and contemplated the meaning of that expression, that I truly learned something about myself. For tonight, at least, it ended up being just what I needed.