20190324.0430

To follow up on what I posted yesterday, I am having trouble thinking of myself as something other than my job first. I suppose it is because I am as habituated to the working world as I am--and since I've had a job for more years than I've not, nearly as many years as I was in school, it makes sense. Certainly, when I introduce myself to people, I give my name, but I give my professional affiliation immediately thereafter, and I think it is the latter that sticks with people. It matters more what I do than who I am; the job matters more than the person who holds it. And while there might be some good in that--the work gets done, no matter by whom--it does tend to skew my view, and I do not think I am alone in having such a perspective.
The thing is, I do more than my job. Even if a focus on deeds rather than being is appropriate--and I am not making the argument that it is or it is not--that does not mean that a focus on professional position is the most important one. It does not mean it is what should be presented early on, forming the impression against which all that follow is assessed. As I continue to puzzle out who I am outside my work, I wonder what impressions I make in the minds of others if I introduce myself as, say, my wife's husband or Ms. 8's father, as the son of my parents or the brother of my brother--and I was the son of my parents before I began school, the brother of my brother before I began work, and the husband of my wife and father of my daughter before I started working the work that I work now. But the work has supplanted even the earlier identities, and the later ones have grown only with that particular manure spread upon the soil; it has changed the fruit somehow, though I do not know how, having no standard against which to compare the produce I can harvest.
Too, what impressions would form did I introduce myself according to other things I do? Did I lead off with my name and my being a gamer--"Hi; I'm Geoff, and I play tabletop RPGs"--what would I come off as being? If I led off with announcing myself as a member of my family, as in a particular relationship with specific other people (and foregrounding one over the others), that would be something people would easily understand; it might read strangely, but it would read. Naming myself a gamer, and a specific type, might well not read at all, even if it is as true a statement as "Hi, I'm Geoff, and I help direct a Hill Country nonprofit." But calling ourselves our recreational activities, though they may be more truly who we are than our jobs or even our bloodlines, strikes the mind as strange. (And privileged, as well, but that's a discussion to have at another time, if at all.) Perhaps it ought not, but it does.