The Problem with Knowing Exactly Who You Are

Just a note before we begin, the voice over is a real treat on this one.

I have gotten too good at being myself.

I know what I love, I know what I want, I know what to do.

I am so efficient at being Amie and so devoted to my goals and delights, that my life has gotten fucking wonderful and also rather predictable. A bit unsurprising and expected.

Each day, I devote myself to my writing, to my art. Each day, I go to the gym to move my body and then I sauna, because I love to sauna. Each day, I eat literarily the same food, because I have figured out the food I love to eat. Each day I spend time reading books, and each day I journal. I love this life! It’s holy. It’s also very efficient, stream lined and the same.

Not only have I niched down my own antics but we are also dealing with a broader cultural flattening. Our algorithms are telling us who we are, what we like, and how to spend our time and then they keep us that way as they niche down the content they give to us. They dictate what sort of style, art, topics, and language we use and erase diversity from our culture.

I do not want a flat life, or a flat culture —1 I want diversity, aliveness, play and unpredictability. I want to change and evolve! I want my life to expand as I get older, not niche down.

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Walt Whitman.

In order to explore my multitudes I have made a promise to myself to partake in the occasional side-quest. I want to do things I would not normally do. I want to do things I am bad at. I want to do things that make me uncomfortable. I want to do things that would make Zuckerburg say: We don’t have data for this version of Amie. Don’t serve Amie this. Give Amie what she already knows. Keep Amie the same.

There’s no ‘good’ or ‘responsible’ reason for me to do this. It is not relevant. It is not productive, but still, I signed up for five classes with Sarah Valentine, Acting Voice Coach extraordinaire. Allow me to detail this wonderfully out of routine experience.

It took a while to properly explain to Sarah that I was not an actor and that there was no script to rehearse. I was here to play. But once she realised: it was game on. Class one was a southern usa accent.

It is so silly to talk in a fake accent to a stranger on the internet. And yet, I felt the power of shared play immediately. We were strangers over zoom, but we were immediately giggling, story telling, bonding. The shared imagination zone allowed for an immediate intimacy that is very hard to find in adult life. We were just two people from southern USA shooting the shit. I was literarily pretending to be someone else. Imaginative play requires a huge trust in the other person, trust that they won’t laugh, won’t dismiss the game, won’t step out of the world you’re building together. That kind of trust creates closeness quickly. This sort of play is how we make friends when we are young. And it was how I was making a friend now, as an adult.

I left the session feeling so joyful. I hadn’t played like that in a long time. If I hadn’t gone on this side-quest, I would not have gotten to play.

The next week, we had Scottish lessons.

I am of Scottish heritage. But it turns out I am very bad at the Scottish accent. The southern accent came much easier to me. This time, I had to suck. I have become very good at being myself, but I want to be ever evolving, I want a bumpy (opposite of flat?) life. This requires me to sometimes be very bad at things.

So I had to do something silly and I had to suck at it. And guess, what? It was still fucking wonderful. In fact, sucking made it better. It was so funny. And again, the vulnerability of shared play and my own sucking allowed for beautiful conversations in a very weird accent to unfold.

I left the session feeling so joyful. If I hadn’t gone on this side-quest, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to be bad at something, I wouldn’t have been able to experience the vulnerability of being a beginner.

Next week, we are going to be a couple of Welsh gals. I can’t wait. I wonder what unexpected delight it will offer me.

Destabilisation doesn’t mean we need to self sabotage, or do something dramatic. We just need to find small moments in our days, weeks, months to do something outside of our regular programming. Even if it just taking a different route home from work, or doing bad accents on a zoom call for fun.

I have had so many new thoughts about vulnerability, play, imagination, sucking at things, intimacy and friendship. I have seen parts of me I haven’t seen since I was literarily a child. I wouldn’t have had any of these thoughts or experiences without diverting from the path.

I hope you go on a side-quest this week, because I don’t think you realise how many things you contain, how expansive you are, how much left there is for you to explore.

Amie x

It's high time you read my book