The Obsessive Dilettante

I feel like I’m going through a mini identity crisis.

I think part of it is that I started a new job at the beginning of the year so I’m having to introduce myself to people who don’t know me and have never known me, so all they can use to identify me are the things I’m currently interested in and are obvious markers of “who I am.”

Another part of it is that I’ve lost touch with a lot of my long-term friends the past few years as they get married and have kids and start new careers or get promoted and move to other places in the world, so when I do see them again, it almost feels like I am no longer myself because even though we get along as great as ever and still love and appreciate each other, we’re also somehow still strangers. It’s weird being faced with this identity of your past that is still very much who you are, but perhaps isn’t as visible or maybe as central to your identity as it once used to be.

So I feel like lately I keep having to show the world “who I am” a lot more than I have in years and it’s a bit exhausting and bewildering, because I’m not sure really who that is. 

Yet still another part is that I’m trying to gradually cull my life of unnecessary flotsam and jetsam. Not necessarily full-on Kon Mari-ifying my life, but I’ve realized I’ve lived in the same apartment for the past eight-going-on nine years, which is astounding to me. I keep telling people I’ve lived here “about five years” because apparently I have no concept of time, but I moved here in December 2009, which is… mind-boggling. Two more years here and this will be the place I have lived the longest.

In that time I’ve naturally accumulated a lot of… stuff… and I’m just tired of dealing with it. I don’t have a lot of storage space. Wait, that’s kind of a lie. I don’t have a lot of useful storage space. I do have access to a large crawl space that is about a third the size of my apartment, and which I use, but I hate crawling into it (it’s so awkward to clamber up there!) that most of the time I just shove a box in and hope for the best.

So I’ve slowly started to declutter. It’s hard, because while we weren’t technically poor when I was growing up, we were definitely on the lower side of lower-middle-class, so I get that instinctive hoarding panic where I think that even if I’m not using it now, or haven’t used it in months (or years), I might need it one day, and I spent my precious money on it so I can’t just throw/give it away yet.

It’s also hard because the past couple of years I’ve been going through a low-grade depression due to being unhappy at work, personal family stuff, and just general stress, and I find I’ve slid into a kind of shopping addiction that gives me the dopamine hit to get through the rough weeks. The catch is that usually that shopping takes a form of a hobby, so it’s not as obviously insidious as just idly buying things to have things. I have a project! Or a vision for a project! And I need XYZ to make that product happen! So I buy XYZ and, surprise, immediately lose interest in the project – but I still have XYZ taking up space in my apartment and my life.

But really all those projects were me just desperately trying to find an identity beyond who I felt the world saw me as, someone I wasn’t particularly happy with.

I’m an idealist so I know I’m always going to struggle with visions of who I want or “ought” to be. But those are just visions – I am who I am, flaws and all, and honestly, I’m not that bad. I’m my own harshest critic, my own worst enemy, and if I could just get out of my head every once and a while, I could see that maybe I’m a pretty cool person with a pretty cool life. Maybe I haven’t realized all those dreams I had since I was child, or maybe I’m not where I thought I would be by now, but I’m somewhere, right? I’m here. I’m living. Most days I’m relatively happy, and I’m finding roads that will bring more happiness since I have a better idea of what I value, and of what value I am.

But this is all still to say I still struggle. I’ve mapped out a vague plan over the next year or so (it’s convenient having a birthday in the middle of summer because it’s so easy to “reboot” those annual resolutions every six months – once for the New Year, once for a new birthday) to help me become my best self – or at least a more settled self – while shedding some of my emotional and literal baggage.

Anyway. This got long and personal, but I just want you to know that no one has their life totally figured out. If they do, it’s a lie – to themselves, if nothing else. And if you think you’ll know how to magically adult and everything will somehow fall into place by the time you hit your thirties, well, it won’t. But that’s okay. Because that’s just life, and humans adapt and change and figure out how to survive.

Finally, I know I haven’t been as active on tumblr as much as I used to be (the queue is a lie!), but I still want to let you know that I appreciate all of you who’ve stuck around with me for the past seven-ish years. That’s the longest I’ve actively been on a social media site, so it really means a lot to me that y’all are out there somewhere, still somehow interested in me and my interests. I don’t produce much original content anymore, so I’m amazed I still regularly get new followers (that aren’t even all porn bots!). I don’t know why you’re here, but thanks for stopping by and thinking this space was somehow nifty enough to add to your dash.