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.
> 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."
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 ;)
> 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've seen it as well.
Also, medical professionals tend to only be around other medical professionals for most of their 20's and early 30's, which really helps create a kind of insular and closed culture. Having to match for residencies and fellowship doesn't help (you'll get shipped somewhere you know nobody and be forced to work long hours and your only support network will be colleagues). It's not that dissimilar to how a cult operates when you really think about it.
It's no surprise they come to identify strongly with the tittle and will do things to fit in with the "club".
> 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.
New York investment bankers and stockbrokers. I don't think any of us want to know all the American Psycho shit that goes down in those professions, but I do know of one anecdote (which I can't cite but may have gotten from Hackernews years ago): Apparently, the thing to do if you're in high finance in NYC is to live in a posh apartment in Manhattan. You could live in a (relatively, this is NYC) cheap apartment in Brooklyn or the Bronx and save a bit of money to put towards retirement or whatever -- but you will be looked down on by your peers and passed over for promotions. The higher-ups want to see you "hungry", as they think it makes you more loyal and driven.
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.
> "I want to do X" actually means "I want to have done X,"
I co-authored a book with someone, which ended up meaning I did 90% of the work and they could be prodded with considerable effort to contribute in a few areas and give feedback. But they were thrilled to have been an author and hand out copies etc.
No real harm from my angle. I have no issue with them being a co-author. Doesn't hurt me. But a perfect example of this principle. A former boss at a small company was a somewhat similar example. They liked being a $X. They came to not like doing the work of being a $X.
Agreed on the first point. I let other people call me an artist or photographer or pianist or whatever I deserve - I don't even need to agree with it, and I've replied that holding a camera doesn't make me a photographer more than standing in a garage makes one a car or going to $RELIGIOUS_PLACE makes one a $RELIGIOUS_FOLLOWER - but I am growing into rocking the PhD title that I proudly earned.
>For a lot of people, "I want to do X" actually means "I want to have done X,"
I think in many cases it's more like "I want to want to do X." They think it would be great to be flowing with words, musical ideas, technical ideas, ready and motivated to create, but presently they are not.
> 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.
What's interesting to me is that sometimes even 'doers' feel this way. There are days when I absolutely love practicing and training and there are days when I wish I could reap the rewards without putting in the work.
This is a trick I learned a long time ago, and why I still hate standup. If I need/want to do something, the more time I actually spend talking or thinking about it, the less likely it is to get done.
If you actually want to get it done, don't talk about it, just do it.
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.
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".
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
I’m sure that happens. In lots of cases there’s nothing I can do about that. In many cases, an hour or two together is enough for people to drop that with me, personally. I’m pretty “boundary dissolving”.
What I don’t think will ever really work, though, is getting introduced as a software engineer and being annoyed at people for it. Or, even speaking up, “that’s something I do, it doesn’t define me”.
It’s pretty hard to convince people of stuff by telling them. It’s just about impossible to convince someone your are not contained by an identity when it seems to have such a tight hold on you.
I’m an awful interviewer, mostly in the sense that I just don’t do it. I certainly don’t give people the warm fuzzies by asking them questions that seem like I’m taking an interest in them.
What I do have going for me is a willingness and ability to bounce around between many different planes of reality and meet people on whichever one they choose (or that I can lure them too). The boundary dissolving is first internal, being willing to try many different things, be many different people. And never cast those old selves aside. Even if you throw out the tennis racket, don’t throw out the tennis player.
And when you talk with someone, feel around, see where you can meet them. And then meet them there, without preamble or apology. If you think they’re interested in tennis, just go into a conversation about it with the confidence of already being at a match together. This feeling out is also rooted in the present moment. I’ve probably asked someone “where did you go to school?” around three times in my life just to try it out, and was bored with myself before I finished the sentence. Can’t imagine asking “didja play any sports?”. But a game on the TV in the bar that someone is checking for the score is enough to see if we can meet there. Often we don’t, and that’s fine, too.
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)
> 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.
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.
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."
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.
> 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.
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.
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.