Easter Sunday Identity Crisis


Merry Easter, yall. I'm not a massive chocolate person (my philosophy is similar to that of the Vatican with its guards - if it ain't Swiss, don't bother. Little cultural joke for u there #guardiasvizzera ur welcome) but today has been pleasant. My uterus is attacking me from the inside, but I have bolognese and watermelon, and considering past years have included such activities as crying all day (holler for 2014) and the Family Easter Gin-n-Wine Incident of 2011, uneventful is fine by me.

I've been doing a lot of pondering lately. I mean I've been doing a lot of pondering for the last 22 years, but recently it's taken on a different tone. What's set this off is that I feel like I've become a bit jaded when it comes to youtube. I don't know whether that's just because I'm at a particularly introverted stage in my life or because I've seen a lot more of the business side of it lately, but it's left me with a lot of ideas and no actual energy to film. I'm not even sure if energy is the right word, it's more that I've lost my sense of how to actually act. It shouldn't be that hard, because generally speaking I just act the same way I would in real life, but the problem there is I've started questioning that as well. Yeah, now we're getting into the depths of the conundrum. Like a kraken from the deep, comes the identity crisis I should have had maybe eight years ago.


As I do every time things start to get deep over here, I feel it's necessary to clarify that I'm overall very happy at the moment, this is just one fragment of my overall being which I am choosing to examine more carefully than the others. Because the others are all chillin. The fact I'm happy with everything else is what leaves me free to focus on the fact that I DON'T KNOW WHAT MY PERSONALITY IS ANYMORE. I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT MY ACCENT IS I THOUGHT IT WAS GETTING MORE AMERICAN BUT THEN EVERYONE ELSE SAID IT WAS GETTING MORE AUSTRALIAN HOW AM I MEANT TO BE AN ADULT IF I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHICH WAY I WANT TO PRONOUNCE THE WORD "RENAISSANCE" AND THAT MIGHT SEEM LIKE A WORD I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO PRONOUNCE THAT OFTEN ANYWAY BUT I'M ME SO OF COURSE I DO I SAY IT ALL THE TIME SO IT'S A VERY PRESSING ISSUE

Seriously guys, I'm fine.


It's weird though. I've had the same personality literally my entire life. Like every single thing I've done - since and including the fact that my first word was a command, after which I immediately started speaking in full sentences - is perfectly in line with the personality I have now. Diary entries from 2006 - spot on. Creepy letter to the Three Bears from 2001 telling them "I flung [Goldilocks] out the merry window" - couldn't have written it better today. This weekend I've listened to the Backstreet Boys, read Harry Potter and played Pokemon - could literally be 1998. By all accounts, my personality is terrifyingly consistent. I've been slightly different evolutions of the exact same person my entire life. Yet I can't seem to figure out how to be that right now. 
That sounds heavier than it needs to still aces over here I swear pals pls don't worry xx

I am so sure about so many things about myself. I know what I like, I'm arguably more sure about what I don't, I know what I'm good at, and what's important to me, and I know what I want most out of life. You can tell I've spent the last two decades thinking about myself. But I'm starting to think that certainty might be part of the problem. There are so many things that I want to do. When I think about it now there are at least three different conflicting paths that I'm equally as convinced I'm meant to joyfully frolic down towards my eventual destiny of accomplished milfery, superchildren and a swarm of golden retrievers, but I feel like I can't commit to one without abandoning the others. So I don't commit to any of them.


I don't frickin like that. I don't want to just chill at the fork in the road while my youth crumbles around me. I value my skin's elasticity. I enjoy my natural hair colour and lack of sun damage. I want to strike while the iron's hot and I still have at least ten years left of my original hips. I DON'T WANT MY METABOLISM TO SLOW DOWN BEFORE I'VE EATEN ENOUGH TGI FRIDAY'S CHICKEN FINGERS TO PUT ME OFF THEM PERMANENTLY.
Still fine.

But one of the strongest facets of my much-discussed steadfast personality is that I am stubborn as hell. I am like a toddler mixed with a rock mixed with my old dog Goldy when she decided she didn't want to go where you were telling her to and would just sit there like nah m8 until you physically slid her away. And maybe one other slightly more noble element to portray this trait in a vaguely positive light, like idk an elephant or Mufasa or something. I was going to say Voldemort but that probably wouldn't help the cause. Point is, I'm too stubborn to ever willingly abandon any one of my paths. But I am also overly aware that I need to get a wriggle on. So I'm just kind of sat here trying to mash them into one big road with my mind.


I do think it's achievable. The things I want aren't so opposite that they could never work together, but they do all require a certain level of effort and time, and to remain distinct from each other. That's where the problem comes in. How do you put 100% of your dedication into three things, and make sure they compliment each other without blending into one? It's like how I imagine making a multicoloured layer cake would be if I ever had the patience to make one - if you get it right then all the colours work together to make a tasty rainbow treat, but get the balance wrong and it turns into a big brown pile of mush. I don't want my life to be a big brown pile of mush, guys. I understand that this is a shocking revelation, but I don't.

I think it goes along with a problem that a lot of people eventually encounter when they've always had a certain level of expectation attached to them, whether consciously or not. If someone's always had perfect grades they're probably going to feel pressured to hold themselves to a higher standard academically than someone who's been consistently average, and that's pretty easy to understand. 
It's a bit harder to explain the pressure that comes with being someone who's just inherently expected to do something. 

My entire life there's always been an expectation - from my friends to my teachers and my parents - that I'll end up doing something with writing, performing or music. It's not an expectation in the same vein as the expectations some parents have of their children to become doctors or lawyers or whatever it might be, most notably because it's not directly forced onto me, but I've been realising more and more lately that it does still add up to a lot of pressure. 


That fact that people have always expected a lot of me is encouraging in a sense, because it means that for whatever reason they believe enough in me and my varyingly concrete abilities to assume that I'll end up doing something big. But the thing is, when your direction is either as vague as "Most Likely To Be Famous" in a yearbook, or as conflicting as "put all your energy into performing" vs. "you'd better start writing that [insert literally anything that can be written here]", doing something "big" really very much does start to feel...big.

As far as external pressure goes my parents are going to be happy as long as I'm happy (and safe and not on hard drugs), so I am lucky in that sense. If I'd ended up leaving uni to do music I know for a fact my very academic father would have been supportive, and if I decided I wanted to work 9-5 in an office my mum would be hella surprised but behind me. As a result, whatever I do is always going to be up to me, and that's great but it's also terrifying. 

Over the course of typing this all out I've realised that the pressure does start with other people - in a positive and largely accidental way - but it ends with me. I can either decide it's too much to deal with and live a mushy brown cake-mess of a life, or I can get my shit together, harness the powers* I'm still 98% sure I have and join those roads together. Unfortunately one of my other longstanding personality traits is that I am the reigning champion of second guessing my own abilities, but we're just going to have to get over that. Because I don't know if I've made it clear enough yet, but I'm not too keen on the mushy brown cake mess.


*I do very much mean 'powers' in a witchcraft supernatural sense. I regularly try to turn the light on with my mind and it hasn't worked yet but Rome wan't built in a day yall