Woody Allen

So I have been thinking a lot about how I am handling this situation. Thinking more in terms of observing and collecting information about myself than in terms of analyzing or explaining what I am doing. And I think I am starting to understand more of who I am as a result of this big move, big start. Or maybe what I already understood is starting to come together more.

I don't know if you'll like this explanation because it's all about stereotyping.

Often (usually?), the way that I view the people and the situations around me is in terms of generalizations. This person is that way, this situation has these factors, requires this response.

Inna is the extrovert flirt who can make anyone her friend. Rika is the introvert intellectual who will get five advanced degrees in biochem and poli sci. Evan is political. Maya is of the hippie/philosopher genre. Of course, these are all my best friends and I realize - intimately - how shallow and un-encompassing these definitions are. Nonetheless, they are the categories I have created and I reflexively revert to them, even with my closest circle of people. You can see how inadequate a system this is, but it's how I think and often informs how I relate to people, even as I'm aware of its insufficiencies.

I have never satisfactorily come to a definition for myself. I suppose I have often been "survivor," but over the past few years that definition has fallen by the wayside. I haven't survived anything in a long time. And finding a replacement term hasn't happened. I can be outgoing and vivacious, but I can equally be boring and awkward. I can be super intellectual, but other times I can be incredibly ignorant, even about things that I should know.

It is not that I think that I am more complicated than those around me - as I said, I know how simplistic my designations are for the people I love. It's rather that I don't really understand who I am, what core personality is the base upon which everything else grows. In some ways I'm living more as a reaction to what's going on around me (or who's around me), in other ways I am a big, sturdy, difficult wall of personality that butts its head against everything. And that sturdy wall seems mostly to consist of my inconsistencies.

And this is where a lot of my recent anxiety has stemmed from. I don't know what "type" I am, who I am, and so I don't know how I react to a new city, how to present myself to people. I am unconfident in my decisions (what to say in class, eg). And so I have been observing myself, noticing when I am awkward and when I am more suave.

After a month of this data-collecting, I think I am Woody Allen. No, really - neurotic to the core, completely awkward because I'm completely self-involved, and yet somehow able to charm a certain class of people.

I am not satisfied that this is the be-all end-all of who I am. Maybe it's a cop-out for letting myself be weird and not behave more socially-appropriately. I think maybe that's true, too. But also I think that there is the neurotic in me, that it does come closer to the confused and conflicting image I have and present.