5 ms·

I can see how this could be a helpful reframing for some folks, but IME centering your attention on how to title yourself can have the reverse effect, which is

I can see how this could be a helpful reframing for some folks, but IME centering your attention on how to title yourself can have the reverse effect, which is to encourage you to indulge in an identity that doesn’t have much substance underneath. I had a phase where me and my friends all thought of ourselves as writers and artists. At the extreme, there was a buddy of mine who would answer simple questions by prefacing with, “Well, as a writer, I tend to X.” And X would be many secondary tendencies you might associate with writers: look at the world differently; ask annoying questions at parties; overanalyze pop culture; drink too much caffeine; procrastinate; joke about procrastinating, etc. The problem is that most of us didn’t do the only X that matters, which is to actually write. And I think we knew this on a subconscious level, and it was why we were so angsty all the time. (Being angsty is another X that writers are supposed to do, so it was a vicious cycle.) Writers who don’t write seems like a niche phenomenon of a narrow and privileged set, but I feel like I see this elsewhere. I’m an engineer these days, and I occasionally come across junior folks who have a similar thing going on. Especially in bigger orgs, you can see people struggle for years with this: there’s something about the job they like (perhaps what the job seems to say about them as individuals), but they have a hard time with the actual moment-to-moment work. I generally think it’s not my place to judge people, let alone gatekeep or call people out on it, but I sometimes feel that I did those folks a disservice by not telling them: hey maybe this just isn’t for you.

mjr00 4y ago
> The problem is that most of us didn’t do the only X that matters, which is to actually write. [...] Writers who don’t write seems like a niche phenomenon of a narrow and privileged set Nah, I think this is super common across titles that people romanticize, mainly in the arts, since there's no real barrier to entry. (Unlike, say, claiming "I'm a lawyer" or "I'm a doctor.") I've seen tons of people say "I want to be/I am a musician" and then spend a bunch of time watching YouTube tutorials, hanging out in musician/producer Discords, etc. and not actually, you know, making music. For a lot of people, "I want to do X" actually means "I want to have done X," and then reap all of the benefits that comes from that: the sense of accomplishment, the fame, social media follows, whatever. These days I'm usually very suspicious of people who make big public pronouncements about how they're starting X task, whether that's going to the gym, learning guitar, building something in Rust, or whatever. If you wanted to do the activity, you'd just do it without all the pomp and circumstance. Every time I've seen a friend on social media announce they're going to start a grand new adventure, they fizzle out after a month or two. The ones who get shit done will show up to a party looking amazing and casually mention, "Yeah, I've been hitting the gym."
- zamnos 4y ago
  Yeah there have been studies that as soon as you tell someone about the thing you're intending to go, be it go to the gym or become a musician, that causes you to lose motivation. But in today's Instagram, pour your heart out online, hyper connected world, trying to build up that follower count for online clout world, narrating your own life is how you live in it. It's one thing to proclaim I'm going to go to the gym and become hella ripped like the Rock and then can't follow through, it's another thing to be a smartphone addicted person that's posts every time they're at the gym. Point is, some people like the pomp and circumstance, others really hate the spotlight. What'll blow your mind is the fact that those two groups often work together, with one person working behind the scenes and the other being the face of things. Ghostwriting isn't just about writing.
- eckza 4y ago
  In short: don't talk about it, be about it.
- pixl97 4y ago
  >titles that people romanticize, Very strange that right after the arts are two titles that are highly romanticized. Back in the days I owned my own business and had a sizeable medical client base, I cannot tell you how many doctors had to buy a BMW because their other doctor friend has a BMW and you're not one of the "doctor club" unless you own one. I come from a family heavily involved in the criminal justice system, and the lawyers, police, and judges I know have the same problems with falling in common tropes. And don't even get me started on engineers. Give them 10 minutes and we'll tell everyone how liberal arts are the end of the world ;)
  - scns 4y ago
    Tribalism?
  - TheMoonToMyLeft 4y ago
    [dead]
  - 908B64B197 4y ago
DeathArrow 4y ago
[flagged]
yakubin 4y ago
I’m often called an artist by people who know me IRL, which annoys me for a bunch of reasons. One is that I don’t see myself this way. I just sometimes do stuff that is art-adjacent. Another is that making it a noun instead of a verb reduces me entirely to that one side of me and also suggests that it is something very stable, something that I’m going to be for the rest of my life, because well this is who I am after all. “I shoot photos”/“I make films”/“I write poetry”/“I write software” has a very different shade than “I’m a photographer”/“I’m a film maker“/“I’m a poet”/“I’m a software developer”. The latter feels very reductive.
- CharlesW 4y ago
  You are large, you contain multitudes. Different people will see you differently because your light is refracted through their experience with you.
  - cutemonster 4y ago
    I still wonder if "He (or she) is a poet ... And a software developer" causes a conflict to arise in many people's brains. They want it simple, pick one? Whilst "He writes software and poetry" doesn't? Or to a lesser extent? Personally I say I build software, not that I'm a software eng :-). (And that I practice the guitar ... for real)
- travisjungroth 4y ago
  You can view it as a label and the nice thing about labels versus boxes is you can have a bunch labels at once. Labels and identities are also temporary. Being something doesn't inherently mean you'll be that way forever. I say "I was a pilot" since I don't fly anymore, even though I still have the licenses. Someday it will be that "I was a software engineer". Someday it will be "I was alive".
  - cutemonster 4y ago
    Nice that you think in that way :-) I wonder though if what you look at as labels, many others treat instead like boxes? F.ex. if they've classified you as a software engineer, then ... I'm thinking it doesn't occur to most people that you might be a writer and musician too hmm
CharlesW 4y ago
> I had a phase where me and my friends all thought of ourselves as writers and artists. The difference between this and what the article's talking about is that you never wrote, and you never made art. If you had, you could've credibly called yourself those things while you were doing them, even if sporadically and/or badly. > "We become a runner when we start running a few days a week." The article makes the point that it's okay to think of yourself as a [title] once you start doing the things a [title] does. From that POV it's not encouraging delusion, just generosity toward oneself.
tpoacher 4y ago
The article actually seems to agree with you. The advice seems to be "as long as you're writing, you're allowed to call yourself a writer. don't have an ethereal unachievable standard that needs to be reached first before you're allowed to use the title."
LoveMortuus 4y ago
I prefer it the other way. If you're not writing, you're not a writer, thus if you want to be a writer you need to write and just doing it once doesn't mean anything, you have to keep doing it, because if I once ate a vegan meal, it wouldn't mean that I'm vegan. You are what you do. While you're writing you're a writer. The more time you spend writing the more of a writer you'll be. If you want to call yourself a writer, you have to write. That's why I always say, judge people not for their words, but for their actions.
danielmarkbruce 4y ago
There is also the opposite. Ie, people who seem to actually do a lot of a given thing, but dislike the culture of the people in said field and hence don't identify with them and would never call themselves that thing. It's probably not as common, but it's there.
kodah 4y ago
> I can see how this could be a helpful reframing for some folks, but IME centering your attention on how to title yourself can have the reverse effect, which is to encourage you to indulge in an identity that doesn’t have much substance underneath. I agree. Cemented in my mind is the use of the word "activist" by all corners of our political spectrum, and especially among techies in the last decade. At present when I hear the word I have to walk myself through dropping all the gut-reaction feelings attached to that word because of the behavior of people who didn't know what they were doing and acted very poorly. This is an isolated example of one, but I'm sure it translates across subjects.
drpixie 4y ago
How often do you hear "As a parent ...", especially used to justify a completely unremarkable statement. "As a mother, it's important that my child is healthy" - duh.

mjr00 4y ago

> The problem is that most of us didn’t do the only X that matters, which is to actually write. [...] Writers who don’t write seems like a niche phenomenon of a narrow and privileged set Nah, I think this is super common across titles that people romanticize, mainly in the arts, since there's no real barrier to entry. (Unlike, say, claiming "I'm a lawyer" or "I'm a doctor.") I've seen tons of people say "I want to be/I am a musician" and then spend a bunch of time watching YouTube tutorials, hanging out in musician/producer Discords, etc. and not actually, you know, making music. For a lot of people, "I want to do X" actually means "I want to have done X," and then reap all of the benefits that comes from that: the sense of accomplishment, the fame, social media follows, whatever. These days I'm usually very suspicious of people who make big public pronouncements about how they're starting X task, whether that's going to the gym, learning guitar, building something in Rust, or whatever. If you wanted to do the activity, you'd just do it without all the pomp and circumstance. Every time I've seen a friend on social media announce they're going to start a grand new adventure, they fizzle out after a month or two. The ones who get shit done will show up to a party looking amazing and casually mention, "Yeah, I've been hitting the gym."

zamnos 4y ago
Yeah there have been studies that as soon as you tell someone about the thing you're intending to go, be it go to the gym or become a musician, that causes you to lose motivation. But in today's Instagram, pour your heart out online, hyper connected world, trying to build up that follower count for online clout world, narrating your own life is how you live in it. It's one thing to proclaim I'm going to go to the gym and become hella ripped like the Rock and then can't follow through, it's another thing to be a smartphone addicted person that's posts every time they're at the gym. Point is, some people like the pomp and circumstance, others really hate the spotlight. What'll blow your mind is the fact that those two groups often work together, with one person working behind the scenes and the other being the face of things. Ghostwriting isn't just about writing.
eckza 4y ago
In short: don't talk about it, be about it.
pixl97 4y ago
>titles that people romanticize, Very strange that right after the arts are two titles that are highly romanticized. Back in the days I owned my own business and had a sizeable medical client base, I cannot tell you how many doctors had to buy a BMW because their other doctor friend has a BMW and you're not one of the "doctor club" unless you own one. I come from a family heavily involved in the criminal justice system, and the lawyers, police, and judges I know have the same problems with falling in common tropes. And don't even get me started on engineers. Give them 10 minutes and we'll tell everyone how liberal arts are the end of the world ;)
- scns 4y ago
  Tribalism?
- TheMoonToMyLeft 4y ago
  [dead]
- 908B64B197 4y ago

DeathArrow 4y ago

[flagged]

yakubin 4y ago

I’m often called an artist by people who know me IRL, which annoys me for a bunch of reasons. One is that I don’t see myself this way. I just sometimes do stuff that is art-adjacent. Another is that making it a noun instead of a verb reduces me entirely to that one side of me and also suggests that it is something very stable, something that I’m going to be for the rest of my life, because well this is who I am after all. “I shoot photos”/“I make films”/“I write poetry”/“I write software” has a very different shade than “I’m a photographer”/“I’m a film maker“/“I’m a poet”/“I’m a software developer”. The latter feels very reductive.

CharlesW 4y ago
You are large, you contain multitudes. Different people will see you differently because your light is refracted through their experience with you.
- cutemonster 4y ago
  I still wonder if "He (or she) is a poet ... And a software developer" causes a conflict to arise in many people's brains. They want it simple, pick one? Whilst "He writes software and poetry" doesn't? Or to a lesser extent? Personally I say I build software, not that I'm a software eng :-). (And that I practice the guitar ... for real)
travisjungroth 4y ago
You can view it as a label and the nice thing about labels versus boxes is you can have a bunch labels at once. Labels and identities are also temporary. Being something doesn't inherently mean you'll be that way forever. I say "I was a pilot" since I don't fly anymore, even though I still have the licenses. Someday it will be that "I was a software engineer". Someday it will be "I was alive".
- cutemonster 4y ago
  Nice that you think in that way :-) I wonder though if what you look at as labels, many others treat instead like boxes? F.ex. if they've classified you as a software engineer, then ... I'm thinking it doesn't occur to most people that you might be a writer and musician too hmm

CharlesW 4y ago

> I had a phase where me and my friends all thought of ourselves as writers and artists. The difference between this and what the article's talking about is that you never wrote, and you never made art. If you had, you could've credibly called yourself those things while you were doing them, even if sporadically and/or badly. > "We become a runner when we start running a few days a week." The article makes the point that it's okay to think of yourself as a [title] once you start doing the things a [title] does. From that POV it's not encouraging delusion, just generosity toward oneself.

tpoacher 4y ago

The article actually seems to agree with you. The advice seems to be "as long as you're writing, you're allowed to call yourself a writer. don't have an ethereal unachievable standard that needs to be reached first before you're allowed to use the title."

LoveMortuus 4y ago

I prefer it the other way. If you're not writing, you're not a writer, thus if you want to be a writer you need to write and just doing it once doesn't mean anything, you have to keep doing it, because if I once ate a vegan meal, it wouldn't mean that I'm vegan. You are what you do. While you're writing you're a writer. The more time you spend writing the more of a writer you'll be. If you want to call yourself a writer, you have to write. That's why I always say, judge people not for their words, but for their actions.

danielmarkbruce 4y ago

There is also the opposite. Ie, people who seem to actually do a lot of a given thing, but dislike the culture of the people in said field and hence don't identify with them and would never call themselves that thing. It's probably not as common, but it's there.

kodah 4y ago

> I can see how this could be a helpful reframing for some folks, but IME centering your attention on how to title yourself can have the reverse effect, which is to encourage you to indulge in an identity that doesn’t have much substance underneath. I agree. Cemented in my mind is the use of the word "activist" by all corners of our political spectrum, and especially among techies in the last decade. At present when I hear the word I have to walk myself through dropping all the gut-reaction feelings attached to that word because of the behavior of people who didn't know what they were doing and acted very poorly. This is an isolated example of one, but I'm sure it translates across subjects.

drpixie 4y ago

How often do you hear "As a parent ...", especially used to justify a completely unremarkable statement. "As a mother, it's important that my child is healthy" - duh.