Poll: Identity posts

[pegkerr]

It seems to me that I haven't written a real sink-the-teeth-into-the topic for awhile. In the past, I've done a series of posts about identity, which have kicked off some interesting comments:

Security and Transformation
Being a karate student
Being a mother
Being a writer
Character flaws

and a couple which were locked to smaller filter groups.

Since I'm at rather a low ebb, fretful and indecisive, I am having a difficult time settling on a topic. Therefore, why not a poll?

[Poll #572144]

[Obligatory disclaimer: The Management reserves the right to tabulate your votes and then ignore them entirely and do about something totally different. If the Supreme Court can do that in 2000, so can I.]

Comments

[swanguard.livejournal.com]

Being a Christian, please!! )
It's one of the most interesting things!

[eileenlufkin.livejournal.com]

I'm really interested in all 6 topics, but since you're feeling indecisive I picked the two I was most interested in.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

I second the vote about reading - I thought of this when I was going to bed last night, too late to add it, and I'm amused to find that by the time I get back, someone else has already had the same thought. I bet you've been reading for a long time, and I know you both read new books and re-read old ones, but I don't think I've ever seen you talk about what reading is to you, and how it's changed, what it was. And of course, that's fine! But if you're looking for new ways of looking at your identity, I'd think reading might be an interesting piece of it.

And then, see, there's the fact that, via LJ, you have daily conversations on all sorts of topics, some of them quite personal, with a fairly large group of people, many of whom you don't know in person at all. LJ is clearly not the only thing in your life, and yet it is a steady piece of it right now - and can't have been, more than a few years ago - and also, as far as I know, you're the only one in your household who uses LJ. So if you felt like writing about what kind of a role that plays in your life, I'd certainly be interested in reading it.

Mainly, though, I just enjoy reading your introspection, on any topic. It's not the object that's interesting, it's the function. Self-awareness is probably the single biggest thing I can appreciate in a person, RL or on LJ (and lack of it, the most problematic). And you're articulate and write well. So I'm not much use on the indecision front, because if you chose to write an entry about the thoughts you've recently had about your process of trimming your toenails, I'd want to read it.

[chazzbanner.livejournal.com]

I checked a number of these, but I want to put a good word in for 'being Minnesotan.' There is a tendency for people from, umm, elsewhere (coasts? are we saying anything about the coasts?) to lump everyone in flyoverMidwestwhatever as all bland and homogeneous. Distinct things about being Minnesotan? Who'd have thought it! :-P

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Oofda.

[chazzbanner.livejournal.com]

Which none of my family has ever said. However, we played a game called 'duck, duck, grey duck':-) Goose? what goose? Grey duck.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Goose? what goose? Grey duck.

Heh.

I'm from Illinois, which, I have it on good authority, many people from further north-west don't consider to be really the midwest at all. But I spent quite a bit of time in college with a friend from North Dakota (who now lives in Minnesota and has an LJ, come to think of it), who instructed me in the proper function of 'Ufda,' taught me Sven and Ollie jokes, leant me Howard Mohr's How to Talk Minnesotan, and watched MacGuyver with me analytically to catch all the classic midwesternisms. At one point, early in our friendship, we were exiting a building ogether, me half a pace behind her, and at some movement I made she shied away slightly and then explained, "I thought you were going to kick me."

And I said, "No, I don't do that so much."

At which she burst out laughing and said, "Oh, you ARE a midwesterner, after all! What you mean is, 'Why, [hername], I would never *dream* of doing that!!!'"

As I recall, I just shrugged, which made her laugh even more.

:)