Moving Targets
Asking a 15 year old to write about “who am I” is silly, because by the time the teacher gets around to grading the paper, the kid will have changed entirely. People go through some periods of intense change. I was talking to my housemate last night about Saturn Returns and he, who is the same age as I am, told me about how lately, he’s been his moodiest since the age of 16. “something’s going on.” we concluded.
So, there are some things I know about myself: I’m queer. I like music and programming and I’m good at both. Aside from that, instead of trying to pin myself down as a moving target, it would be more useful to have a goal state. So instead of “who am i,” “who do I want to be?”
I would like to be the sort of person that my astrological sign says I should be. (what I love about California: it’s ok to treat astrology with seriousness. anywhere in the country. just say you’re form from california). I would like to have creative ideas and follow through with them. I would like to be smart. I would like to be kind and caring and thoughtful and mindful and mellow and grounded and calm and serene and an activist and ambitious and driven and relaxed.
some of these things conflict, but there’s contexts for everything. also, i would like to be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.
I met a woman during break who makes a list of what she wants to achieve in a year and then on the other side of the paper, she writes what she’s willing to do to meet her goals. she carries the list with her and looks at it first thing in the morning and last thing at night. I’m not sure that I want to be that driven, though. But it does raise the question of how I reach my goal state of being both highly active and very calm. What would I put on the reverse side of my list?