Where is my character? {12.12.2022}
Dec. 12th, 2022 11:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
angelcityI don't know where the core of my character is. I used to spend a lot of time trying to be smart, to do things which would make me see myself as smart. But I don't really care for that feeling anymore — I don't want to impress anybody like that. It can feel strange when you leave behind things that used to be such a big part of you. To think I can never care about that like I once did, is kind of sad, even if I think I am being more true to myself now.
Nowadays I spend a lot of time thinking about my favorite things: The Digimon Movie, the films of Wong Kar-Wei, the novels of Haruki Murakami, Homestuck, Twee Pop, Jeventio (the Jevil x Dimentio crackship), certain forms of fashion. While I truly see something worthwhile in everything I have listed, it seems kind of silly for that to be the core of my identity. It just feels like a bunch of things, like if I staked my identity on Coca Cola and chia pets. Yesterday my friend said to me, "people seem to define themselves increasingly by minutiae." I don't know how problematic that really is, though it can produce a feeling of general offline loneliness when you can't find people who are hyperfixating on the same topics as you. Still, I really like getting obsessed with art/media, and when others are too, from hobbyists to academics. There was this quote I read in highschool from some scientist that when you love something, it is very easy to pay attention to it. So I think paying close attention to something — appreciating its small details (which is what minutiae are, really, when you take out the negative connotation) — feels like a good thing to me. Feels like love.
But I also think sometimes I can lose myself in the turbulence of my affections, toward people or toward art/media. That turbulence can be dizzying: like a tornado it can pick me up and set me down somewhere else, leaving me all turned around and confused. So while the things we love might say something about us, in the psychoanalytic sense of providing an insight into our unconscious, they can also be a way that we forget about ourselves, and outsource our selfexpression to someone else, or somewhere else (meaning, a fictional world).
Okay, now I will talk about the more "real things": the more unadulterated experiences I love: missing and longing for those I care about, the warmth of being among friends and saying my feelings to them, the feeling I get when I eat a really tasty meal. But by themselves, these experiences are not enough either. In each of these things, I can see a distinct part of myself, but something is missing.
So maybe I feel artistic, because the core of my character feels like its somewhere DancingInBetween all the things I love the most. It's something that I can feel, and sometimes see, DancingInBetween everything I love and want to show the world. Pinning a word on something like that is hard: I don't think there is a readymade word to describe such a thing.
Anyway, maybe the problem of locating one's character is general, and the domain of the human soul is just too expansive for a survey of its borders to be carried out.
Feeling: curious
Wondering: What little bugs crawl under the rock of my affections?
P.S.: This post was inspired by a post made by backtolife on hatenablog. You can check out his writing here!
Nowadays I spend a lot of time thinking about my favorite things: The Digimon Movie, the films of Wong Kar-Wei, the novels of Haruki Murakami, Homestuck, Twee Pop, Jeventio (the Jevil x Dimentio crackship), certain forms of fashion. While I truly see something worthwhile in everything I have listed, it seems kind of silly for that to be the core of my identity. It just feels like a bunch of things, like if I staked my identity on Coca Cola and chia pets. Yesterday my friend said to me, "people seem to define themselves increasingly by minutiae." I don't know how problematic that really is, though it can produce a feeling of general offline loneliness when you can't find people who are hyperfixating on the same topics as you. Still, I really like getting obsessed with art/media, and when others are too, from hobbyists to academics. There was this quote I read in highschool from some scientist that when you love something, it is very easy to pay attention to it. So I think paying close attention to something — appreciating its small details (which is what minutiae are, really, when you take out the negative connotation) — feels like a good thing to me. Feels like love.
But I also think sometimes I can lose myself in the turbulence of my affections, toward people or toward art/media. That turbulence can be dizzying: like a tornado it can pick me up and set me down somewhere else, leaving me all turned around and confused. So while the things we love might say something about us, in the psychoanalytic sense of providing an insight into our unconscious, they can also be a way that we forget about ourselves, and outsource our selfexpression to someone else, or somewhere else (meaning, a fictional world).
Okay, now I will talk about the more "real things": the more unadulterated experiences I love: missing and longing for those I care about, the warmth of being among friends and saying my feelings to them, the feeling I get when I eat a really tasty meal. But by themselves, these experiences are not enough either. In each of these things, I can see a distinct part of myself, but something is missing.
So maybe I feel artistic, because the core of my character feels like its somewhere DancingInBetween all the things I love the most. It's something that I can feel, and sometimes see, DancingInBetween everything I love and want to show the world. Pinning a word on something like that is hard: I don't think there is a readymade word to describe such a thing.
Anyway, maybe the problem of locating one's character is general, and the domain of the human soul is just too expansive for a survey of its borders to be carried out.
Feeling: curious
Wondering: What little bugs crawl under the rock of my affections?
P.S.: This post was inspired by a post made by backtolife on hatenablog. You can check out his writing here!
