What's in a name?
Wednesday, 3 August 2005 21:15![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
earthbelow
A lot apparently.
So over here Ari got me thinking about what I consider myself.
The initial question seemed simple. I consider myself a person. Right now. The entity answering the question is a person.
And me, the objective, whole shoebag of thought/memory/experience/feeling/personality Me is a person.
But what is![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
thousandpages? What is sage_theory? What is a screenname? What is a pen name?
Is that another person? Do screennames and psuedonyms count as personas or personality fragments. Because the truth is, there is a difference in how I'd act if I were posting assage_theory as opposed to in this journal as opposed to in real life if we were face to face. Sage would be fannish, probably perkier, most likely bouncy. Thousandpages, less fannish, more "real life" oriented. Probably more boring and serious. Quieter maybe. Because I come to those journals, those outlets of myself with different purposes.
Face to face there'd be a lot less questions. It'd be Objective Me. Because there's no filter between Me and You. But still. I'd have a different purpose. Real Life Non 'Net Me - I'm still figuring that one out. But it wouldn't be sage or thousandpages.
So is Objective Me a collective of Real Life Meg and School Meg and thousandpages and sage_theory and SadMoon1 and all my other various nicknames, psuedonyms, 'net identities? I have more than a few. Some for RPG's, some for fiction, some for real life, some for saying things I can't say to people I care about or people who percieve me in a certain way.
I don't feel like a liar for it either. Because I feel justified in having dividers on my life. I don't talk about fanfiction to my mom. Or to my sister. Or my classmates. Or my professors. Or friends from real life. I don't talk about family issues to people who I squee over television shows with (well, some. Some have transcended fen friendships).
Not necessarily that anything about me is so scandalous that I couldn't, but my family would be bored/confused by fanfic. My fannish friends would probably not care to hear about my school angst or real life, because they're there to talk about Jack and Daniel or Firefly because they also have friends who they discuss their real lives with. We don't know each other well enough to say "oh, my dad had an alcoholic blackout last night" or something.
It's always been this way for me. You have church friends and school friends and neighborhood friends and they're not the same. They can't be. And the context in which you bond with them is totally different.
Church friends are the people you act a little better around and you're peas in a pod come Sunday and Wednesday and mission trips, but you don't tell them about school 'cause they go somewhere else and you don't play with them other days of the week. Plus, your other friends wouldn't get Lent or the building fund or why Mr. Puckett is so great or how everyone's at odds about the building fund. You pray together. Sign each other's bibles. Sit next to each other in the van.
Neighborhood friends are there for riding bikes and going places when you're bored. You bond when you need to, go home. You don't tell them your issues, 'cause they're only there when it's fun. When the fun ends, they go find someone else.
School friends are there from Monday to Friday, 7:15-2:15, August-May. Maybe you go over to each other's houses, but mostly you don't. You sit at lunch together and try to sit next to each other in class and copy homework and gossip and maybe even sit on the bus together and save seats. You call on the phone. But really, if you change schools or get separated, it's over.
But does that mean you're different too, if your friends are? If cleaner, purer, Bible Study!Meg (and trust me, once upon a time she existed and was inordinately devout) exists, is she somehow apart from Objective Me?
I'll go ponder this whilst on vacation.
Wish me good luck on exams tomorrow and fingers crossed for my mom getting the REALLY GOOD JOB. Okay?
- Meg
So over here Ari got me thinking about what I consider myself.
The initial question seemed simple. I consider myself a person. Right now. The entity answering the question is a person.
And me, the objective, whole shoebag of thought/memory/experience/feeling/personality Me is a person.
But what is
thousandpages? What is sage_theory? What is a screenname? What is a pen name? Is that another person? Do screennames and psuedonyms count as personas or personality fragments. Because the truth is, there is a difference in how I'd act if I were posting as
sage_theory as opposed to in this journal as opposed to in real life if we were face to face. Sage would be fannish, probably perkier, most likely bouncy. Thousandpages, less fannish, more "real life" oriented. Probably more boring and serious. Quieter maybe. Because I come to those journals, those outlets of myself with different purposes.Face to face there'd be a lot less questions. It'd be Objective Me. Because there's no filter between Me and You. But still. I'd have a different purpose. Real Life Non 'Net Me - I'm still figuring that one out. But it wouldn't be sage or thousandpages.
So is Objective Me a collective of Real Life Meg and School Meg and thousandpages and sage_theory and SadMoon1 and all my other various nicknames, psuedonyms, 'net identities? I have more than a few. Some for RPG's, some for fiction, some for real life, some for saying things I can't say to people I care about or people who percieve me in a certain way.
I don't feel like a liar for it either. Because I feel justified in having dividers on my life. I don't talk about fanfiction to my mom. Or to my sister. Or my classmates. Or my professors. Or friends from real life. I don't talk about family issues to people who I squee over television shows with (well, some. Some have transcended fen friendships).
Not necessarily that anything about me is so scandalous that I couldn't, but my family would be bored/confused by fanfic. My fannish friends would probably not care to hear about my school angst or real life, because they're there to talk about Jack and Daniel or Firefly because they also have friends who they discuss their real lives with. We don't know each other well enough to say "oh, my dad had an alcoholic blackout last night" or something.
It's always been this way for me. You have church friends and school friends and neighborhood friends and they're not the same. They can't be. And the context in which you bond with them is totally different.
Church friends are the people you act a little better around and you're peas in a pod come Sunday and Wednesday and mission trips, but you don't tell them about school 'cause they go somewhere else and you don't play with them other days of the week. Plus, your other friends wouldn't get Lent or the building fund or why Mr. Puckett is so great or how everyone's at odds about the building fund. You pray together. Sign each other's bibles. Sit next to each other in the van.
Neighborhood friends are there for riding bikes and going places when you're bored. You bond when you need to, go home. You don't tell them your issues, 'cause they're only there when it's fun. When the fun ends, they go find someone else.
School friends are there from Monday to Friday, 7:15-2:15, August-May. Maybe you go over to each other's houses, but mostly you don't. You sit at lunch together and try to sit next to each other in class and copy homework and gossip and maybe even sit on the bus together and save seats. You call on the phone. But really, if you change schools or get separated, it's over.
But does that mean you're different too, if your friends are? If cleaner, purer, Bible Study!Meg (and trust me, once upon a time she existed and was inordinately devout) exists, is she somehow apart from Objective Me?
I'll go ponder this whilst on vacation.
Wish me good luck on exams tomorrow and fingers crossed for my mom getting the REALLY GOOD JOB. Okay?
- Meg
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Good luck
Date: 4 Aug 2005 03:05 (UTC)Email? Dates? Times? *looks hopeful*
no subject
Date: 4 Aug 2005 08:13 (UTC)But, as I met people who I knew online, I figured out that Nel and Me weren't that different after all. Who are we if not the people we *want* to be?
*uses Batman icon because OMG, CB!*