identity

The Throughlines

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

Last week I discussed how I took a long walk where I reflected on my life and choices I realized that, as I drifted back over the years, my choices led to more and more “alien” selves the further back I got in time. At some point the you of the past is unknown territory and you can’t learn anything or relate to them.

Now I’d like to discuss an insight from the same exercise that is not about not who I am, but instead very much who I am.

To recap, at one point in my life I took a walk for over an hour, viewing points of “divergence” in my life, asking where choices may have led down different paths. Sometimes I realized that choices would take me so far away that I’d be a complete different person. However throughout this exercise I saw something else, I saw what I call the “Throughlines,” common, consistent parts of my life.

Throughout the many mes there were consistent patterns in my life, weaving not just the life I had now, but most of the possible ones I could see. There was me now, the mes’ I could have been, and behind that were certain, nearly omnipresent elements. I vaguely call them “Throughlines” because they are consistent over time.

I have always been a writer, and rarely go longer than a year or two without some writing project. I never became the fiction writer I once half-heartedly comprehended as a teen, but I am a writer. My past “maybe selves” included technical writing, grant writing, and science writing. Writing is a Throughline, a deeper me.

I’m always an organizer, always having a plan, always having a project. I ran RPG groups and zines, planned software, and more – it’s no wonder I became a Project Manager. Whatever choices I made in my life, I know I’d have been the guy with a scheme. Planning is a Throughline, a deeper me.

I bring people together, it’s the organizer in me. I’m the guy behind the movie night and the writing club, the gaming group. I love to network people so they can come together, and it’s visible in my past from where I was nearly an administrator for an anthropology department, all the way to team building now. Networking is a Throughline, a deeper me.

There’s other Throughlines of course, from my love of theology to the fact I always return to doing art (even when I’m not good at it). You get the idea, somewhere among all the mes I could have been, probably even the ones so strange I couldn’t imagine them, there were these Throughlines. There’s a me under all the me’s.

In fact, I could see times where I could have ignored my Throughlines, tried to be someone I’m not. I can also see how I would have been miserable. For instance, for those who know me, try to imagine me as a humorous corporate IT ladder-climber – had I gone that direction I’d have hit midlife crises two decades early.

As I noted last time, I invite you to try this exercise. Give yourself at least an hour to walk somewhere pleasant and work backwards through your life, asking who you’d have been with different choices. It’s not just a way to ask about different yous, you might just find out more of who you are, even if you’d have been someone different.

There’s a you behind the yous. Go on, get to know them.

Steven Savage

40 Versions Of Me

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

(Thanks to Serdar for the idea.)

  1. There’s a me who became a comedian.
  2. There’s a me who became a minister and then lost his faith.
  3. There’s a me who became a minister and then lost his heart.
  4. There’s a me who became a tutor.
  5. There’s a me who churns out hack SF at a rapid pace.
  6. There’s a me who collects obscure sci-fi and fantasy movies.
  7. There’s a me who designed psychotronic devices.
  8. There’s a me who designs artificial limbs.
  9. There’s a me who did documentation for video games.
  10. There’s a me who didn’t live to see eighteen.
  11. There’s a me who does neurological research and hates it.
  12. There’s a me who joined a cult.
  13. There’s a me who founded a cult.
  14. There’s a me who got a Computer Science Degree and vanished into a government job.
  15. There’s a me who got deep into indie bands and ran their newsletters.
  16. There’s a me who has a nursing degree.
  17. There’s a me who has only worked in a University setting but isn’t an educator.
  18. There’s a me who helped a company dominate their industry, and I never realized what I did.
  19. There’s a me who is a crotchety old programmer.
  20. There’s a me who is a damn good Executive Admin.
  21. There’s a me who is a humor columnist since my college days.
  22. There’s a me who is a life coach.
  23. There’s a me who is a professional writer – of anything.
  24. There’s a me who is a social worker.
  25. There’s a me who is a therapist
  26. There’s a me who launched an anime fan magazine.
  27. There’s a me who manages video game programmers.
  28. There’s a me who programmed video games.
  29. There’s a me who still works in banking and likes it, for some reason
  30. There’s a me who supports expensive laboratory devices.
  31. There’s a me who was never married.
  32. There’s a me who works in the RPG industry.
  33. There’s a me who writes weird, surrealist fiction.
  34. There’s a me who wrote – and maybe still writes – indie comics.
  35. There’s a me who’s a dual citizen in Canada.
  36. There’s a me who’s a professor of some kind.
  37. There’s a me who just realized what he’s done with his life.
  38. There’s a me who likes himself more.
  39. There’s a me who likes myself less.
  40. There’s a me who never writes things like this list.

What are 40 versions of you I should know?

Steven Savage

You Don’t Have To Write

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

I settled down to read The Society of the Spectacle, the classic work on how modern society’s economy becomes all spectacle with little substance.  I’m sure I’ll have more to discuss, but I’d like to tell you about a reaction.

The book is broken into short chapters and numbered bits of analysis never more than a few paragraphs long.  While reading the analysis of how we commodify the world or turn economy to spectacle, I had ideas.  I had ideas for a book or two I could start writing . . .

Then, I stopped.  Why did I have to write now?  In fact, why the hell did I have to write these books without further analysis?  Also, did I have to read a book on commodities and want to make one?

I found other writers have this situation.  You have the realization a book can exist, and then you think you have to do it.  The cause varies, but the problem is the same.

If you find yourself in this situation, ask why you’re trying to write.

My motivation?  I want to know my works will benefit people and was evaluating my various projects.  My inspirations rode that desire right into “I must do this now,” and I only realized it a while later and stopped.

Part of being a writer is knowing what not to write.  Give yourself a chance to develop that skill, even if you have to ask some hard questions.

Steven Savage