Do my hypocrisies make me look fat?

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

Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"

 

Around the time I became aware that I wasn't actually a victim of circumstances and might actually have some control over the direction my life took, I became a proponent of the adage "Fake it until you make it." (Actually, I became a proponent of many adages, several of which I made up to suit me as the occasion demanded. I've actually engaged in an unofficial campaign to have one of my random rationalizations become one of those "You know what they say" words of wisdom.)

 

This strategy worked very well. I wanted at that time to be a professional actor—no small feat for someone living in a city with no professional theatre company and with no solid professional or educational background. (Professional. Professional. Professional. The word has lost all meaning for me.) I would define myself as an actor when people would ask me, "What do you do?"

 

Tangent: This is an interesting philosophical discussion. Why is it that, when you meet someone, one of the first questions is What Do You Do? This, by the way, is a question that all unsatisfied housewives or unemployed carpenters hate above all others. One of these days, instead of the standard Who Are You, What Are You, How Are You questions that are usually unsatisfying, I'm going to lead with When Are You? I'd like to see where it goes.

I digress.

After a few months of defining myself as an actor—and, of course, doing the work to make it so—I was successful. For two years, the bulk of my income was earned through acting, directing and producing. If it weren't for the fact that more effort was put into getting more work (and therefore money) than actually working, I might be doing it still.

 

Who are you? Who? Who?

The point is, I defined myself by what I wanted to be rather than what I was currently. And it worked. And I stand by the belief that if you want something, move toward it like it already exists and the universe will rise up to meet you.

And I was fully on board with this notion until I became a professional writer and suddenly met many, many people who would tell me that they, too, were writers. "Oh," I'd say, "Who do you write for?" 

"I blog," they'd say. Or they journalled. Or they had once written an 'A' paper in high school. And I'd sniff condescendingly. Because there are writers, and then there are writers. (Note: There are some damn good bloggers out there. And then there is the online equivalent of Bad Teenage Poetry that amounts to nothing more than badly-phrased navelgazing). And why was it that in order to become an electrician or a plumber or a court reporter, one had to go to school in order to have some sort of street cred, but anyone with a keyboard and the capacity to string words together, no matter how clumsily, could call themselves a writer?

I suppose it's because good writing is more subjective than good electricianing. Soon after the house has burned to the ground and the fire inspectors have come and gone, you can stand back and say, "I don't think that was a particularly good piece of wiring." But writing isn't so easily valued as good or bad. 

But, really, a lot of it is bad. Really awful. Borderline criminal. Plus, if the pen really is mightier than the sword, should such weaponry be placed in the hands of barely literate, keyboarding monkeys who can't tell their assonance from their ampersands?

Of course, writing isn't necessarily the most lucrative career choice one can make, JK Rowling aside. I describe myself as professionally poor, and I earn more than the junior writers at work. So if poor writers want to explore being even more poor, who am I to quibble with how they define themselves? Besides, being a writer gives smokers and hard drinkers an air of legitimacy. 

Also, starting tomorrow, I start defining myself as a surgeon. I am now taking bookings for random organ removal.