How Do I Define Myself?
A self-exploration as I contemplate finding my brand.
I used to think that jigsaw puzzles were cut willy-nilly. That someone took to a cutter and sliced to their heart’s desire. Closed their eyes and rolled the knife edge around with childish abandon, singing wildly to themselves, god of their design, creating their own thumbprint as they desecrated some sanctified image of our blue and green earth.
Later, however, I found out that jigsaw puzzle pieces come in 5 to 15 shapes. That even jigsaw puzzle pieces have been forced to fit a mold. Even jigsaw puzzle pieces must, at some point, stand neatly in a row to be counted, measured, and sized.
Where do I fit in?
It’s been only 3 years since I began my journey in the entrepreneurial world, and there hasn’t been a single day I haven’t been bogged down by the question, “What is your brand?” “Have you built your brand?” “You need to think about your brand.”
But how do you begin to build a “brand” when your entire life you’ve always felt like the sour cream and cheddar chip that tastes just like sour cream and onion but have never stopped looking at the nacho cheese thinking maybe that’s where you belong.
Where do I belong?
I’ve been rolled around the earth by ancestors and by parents who escaped war and oppression many times, chasing safety. Yet I’ve never had a sense of home or a community where I could burrow into and call my own, my genetics always just short of adequate wherever their source seemed to pull from.
I’ve tried to be a daughter. I’ve tried to be a big sister. I’ve tried to be a wife. I’ve tried to be a friend. I’ve tried to be nice. I’ve tried to be “of help.” I’ve tried to be responsible. I’ve tried to be considerate. I’ve tried to be small. I’ve tried to be so quiet that the voice inside of my mind will now forever be louder than the voice inside my chest. Every single day since the day I was born I’ve tried to be.
Like most people, I’ve tried to define myself by what I can do. But days of high-level imposter syndrome would cause me to question this again. For years my Twitter bio read “Writer. Editor. Yogi. Em dash enthusiast. Pretend artist.” But it all disintegrated into the matrix with the deactivation of my account, right alongside the 2000+ followers it took me the best part of 10 years to garner.
Now how will anyone know I’m a writer, editor, yogi, em dash enthusiast, and a pretend artist?
On Instagram, I’m Purple Post Editor. Because when considering what I want my brand to be there’s an 8-year-old screaming inside my head that she wants it to be purple, and I have to give her what she wants because so many adults have failed at giving her what she needs. I’m Purple Post Editor with a clear grudge against someone, given all the angry-adjacent posts I share about breaking generational curses and becoming free from people-pleasing.
Even there, I worry, I wonder, I waste time thinking. I overshare, I contemplate that I should cut back on the shady posts about dysfunctional families, about finding yourself, about living for yourself, about giving a world that tries to fit you into a box the finger. “It’s not on brand,” I mutter to myself. It’s not Purple Post Editor. And yet the DMs come in, “I felt this,” “I am relating so hard,” and “All your posts are always on point.” All from amazing people who are not necessarily seeking a service but simply wanting to say, “You see me. Thanks.”
I do see you. But only because I saw me first. Because my compulsion to share me seeing me was stronger than me choosing to hide me again. Does that make sense? (It’s okay if it doesn't. I forgive you.)
Finally, Substack.
Here, too, I wondered how to shape this space to fit my Purple Post Editor brand. Here, too, my mind said “Let’s cut this space into the best-known predetermined 5 to 15 puzzle-piece shapes.” Talk about writing. Talk about adverbs. And participial phrases. And white room syndrome. And how to use subtext. And why commas matter.
But the 8-year-old is screaming for my attention again, and she doesn’t want to fit into yet another box.
Sure, she’ll write about all the technicalities of writing until her fingers fall off. But for the love of [insert deity of your choice - yes, Zeus counts, but I’ll have questions] can we please be seen now?
She wants to talk about writing, and the way writing makes her feel, the way writing helps her grow, the way writing has been her shield and her security blanket. And she wants to talk about books and literature, spicy modern romances AND Jane Austen. Non-fiction biographies AND cozy murder mysteries. Self-help literature AND The Chicago Manual of Style.
She wants to tell you so badly she recently saw Hozier perform for the first time ever and how it changed her perspective as an artist (but really she just wants to work this into every conversation possible). She wants to tell you what she’s learned about writing from his lyrics. She wants to share her crappy poetry. She wants to discuss the ups and downs of her journey to writing her first novel. She wants to say relatable, inspiring things that will light a fire under your ideas, that will reassure you that there’s a place for your voice and that you deserve to be heard.
But most of all, she does not want to fragment another part of herself to fit into a box. She’s tired of boxes. She’s spent so much time doing the work, collecting the scattered pieces of who she is that she cannot bear to have to break them up again for the sake of the brand. She wants to be seen now.
I want to be seen now.
Don’t we all?
Call Substack the homo erectus of my evolution because I am no longer walking on four legs. I want to show up in all my mismatching parts, no longer a dusty pile of broken porcelain, but a work of stained glass, kaleidoscoping through the spectrum of colors both seen and unseen by our limited human sight.
Because I am, after all, the accumulation of my stories and something else completely, unknown even to myself, yet to be discovered. I am everything I’m still to be, everything I’ve collected on my skin, both on the surface and deep. I’m everything I have let go and everything I’ve still to let go of. And what I was yesterday or mere hours ago may not be what I want to be tomorrow, or next week, or next year.
So how do I define myself?
I don’t. Nor am I going to. I refuse. In my formative years, I was discouraged from showing up authentically. Whatever I was, I was wrong, not enough, misaligned—I did not fit into one of the 5 to 15 predetermined shapes. And I’ve spent the best part of my life defining myself by everyone else’s prerequisites, needs, and expectations. Defining my brand is just more of this.
I’m now ready to show up with all my mismatched parts. Because I’m exhausted. Somehow, I suspect maybe you are, too.
My hope is that my brand will metamorphose into a Frankenstein’s monster of sorts. Whatever I am, that essence that lives in me, will shine through enough to form a cohesive, collective voice of all the thoughts that float around my head all day and night.
For the time being, feel free to call my brand “come as you are” because that’s how I’ll be showing up here.
And I’m making it purple.