Project 52 Week 4
My hobby is making snarky comments.
Okay, that's not really a hobby, it's more of a pass time, or a kind of awful personality quirk. All I have to say to that is, don't take this away from me. If I am not being funny and making people laugh then I don't know who I am anymore. This is all I have. I am the meat and sarcasm character. Not the hero, but I think I am.
Isn't it funny that we define ourselves so much by what we do and what we accomplish? Last night I went blues dancing, I try to do this every week as a way to force myself out of my house and because I enjoy it most of the time, and there were two people whose conversation I was eavesdropping on talking about being dancers. One was saying that she had trouble defining herself as a dancer because she loves dancing but only makes it out once every couple of months. The other shrugged and said that he guessed he was a dancer because he goes 3 times a week even though he has only just started learning to dance. They were struggling to define themselves by this thing they love to do because they did not know what the threshold was. I suppose there is a level at which there is a threshold where you can pass the gate from trying something into making it a hobby or a defining element of who you are. I am constantly saying, "writers write," and believe that if you are not writing, if you are not actively doing something you love, you don't really love it you just love the idea of it. It is not who you are.
I am a writer. In fact, I am the best writer unless you want to put the gloves on and settle it.
For me, writing is not something that I think about "having to do." It is something I do. It may not always be an essay, or a blog post, or my novel, but it is always something. It is ingrained in who I am. So I am a writer, even if nothing I write is ever properly published, though that would be much more validating than tapping myself on the head with a magic wand of legitimacy and saying, "I am a writer, I am an artist, I am successful." It is not just a hobby. It is a piece of who I am.
I think the same is true for these two people I was listening to. You can define yourself as a dancer if it is part of you. If you never step out on stage or go out to a dance venue it is harder to prove but that does not change the pieces of you and the ways that you move that might make a person look in and say, "that is a dancer."
That is a dancer.
That is an artist.
That is the meat and sarcasm character in the narrative of my life.
Who are you?
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