Who am I? Who I am.

I'm sitting here in "recovery mode" this a.m....got back very late last night from We Media (check the blog here for exciting stuff!)and I've just started transcribing my notes (and remembering conversations) for a huge post on Snarkaholic.

While I am compsing my notes, I am thinking about two conversations that, even this a.m., resonate on a personal level. The first was a brief conversation I had with Susan Mernit, who I met at Blogher. Susan told me that she found it interesting that I linked my "professional" and "personal" blogs--she found it a bold move. I never really thought of Snarkaholic as a professional blog, but I know that's the one she meant. Given that I've had trouble with the whole professional personna thing, it never really dawned on me that, with Snarkolholic, I might be building a professional personna.

What that personna is, however, I'm not totally sure. For so long I have allowed others to dictate to me who I am supposed to be. When Susan and I were talking, I kept thinking of the various About Me profiles I composed over the time I've been blogging. If y'all are interested, check some of the archives and you will see the various permutations my identity's gone thru (listing them all hear would take up too much space). Part of the identity morphing comes from an intense fear of commitment--don't particularly want to commit to one identity or another, lest one of the identities offend someone or I get defined at that one particular type of person.

After my last divorce, I became aware of (and continue to understand) how a woman's identity or self-presentation, can hurt her in the mating game. If she is too aggressive and likes to show off, well, these are certainly unsuitable traits in a mate--who, after all, is supposed to be there to help the man succeed and look good. I am reminded of Queen Noor al Huessein--who's name means "Light of Hussein." Women are not only meant to be the lights of a men's lives-- we are there to make them shine, not steal their spotlights.

I had similar problems in work situations. I fell into accounting types of jobs because they were plentiful, not that I wanted to be an accountant or finance person. I absorbed a background in non-profit finance while I cultivated a passion and talent for theological study. I couldn't be a theologian because of a lack money for school, and was stuck being a high-level non-profit bookkeeper. It drove me bonkers. Since then, I've resisted any professional pidgeonholing. Doing that, however, hasn't helped me in the job world. Amorphos professional identity equals gelatinous job prospects.

So, I imagine that the reason I've linked both blogs is an attempt to syntesize both parts of me--to give people a larger picture of me in the blogosphere and to understand myself in the process. With the latest re-phrasing of my profile, and my conversation with Susan (and Watts Wacker)I am getting a better grip on that.

The second conversation I had was with Watts Wacker, Founder and Director of FirstMatter,LLC. Watts is a futurist, and spoke on the In Us We Trust panel at the end of the day. He talked about "truth stories" (as in myths) vs. "true stories," about "the fringe" now becoming "the norm" (Ozzy Osborne the new Ozzie Nelson)...but what struck me about what Watts said was his possibly rhetorical (sometimes I never know)inquiry "how do we live with paradox?"

And I thought of Thomas Merton.

Merton's writings on paradox, and that the only way to live *with* paradox is to understand there is something greater than oneself, I thought, might be helpful to providing part of an answer to Watt's question. He graciously gave this little pion a few moments to discuss Merton, whom he hadn't heard of. We also got into a funny little conversation about mystical questing--where Watts told me about visting with shamens and that sort of thing. I said "believe it or not, I was once Holy. I know what you mean." (I was, at one time considered Holy by serveral people--although myself never thought I could ever be a candidate for sainthood--maybe the two are different, I'm not sure) There seemed to be some interesting common background between this guy and myself, and I would truly enjoy having a bit of time to talk with him again. Who knows...he's over the border in CT and I told him I'd email anyway.

Even though I was amazingly tired and not as focused as I would have liked to have been, I think that I left something with him to think about. That, to me, is what a theologian should do. My sense, though, is that many theologians have become bogged down in "divinity" rather than philosophy, eschew popular culture rather than get into it, and haven't been able to reach out to speak with people like Watts because they don't go the places where they're at.

All I can say to that is, if theologian Paul Ramsey never stuck his nose in a hospital and never got into it with doctors, we wouldn't have medical ethics.

So, I begin to wonder if by talking to Watts in the manner in which I did, I have begun to assert myself in an identity that I am very comfortable with. I have no problem approaching the rich and the powerful and not just finding out about them, but giving them bits and pieces of information that they might find helpful--esp. if those bits and pieces are of a theological (not just spiritual) perspective. I thought he needed to hear about Merton, so I told him. Let's see what happens...

Well, it's noon now...the coffee's kicked in and I still have to take a shower. I have so much more writing to do, and so little time to do it! I am, though, happy that I was able to go to We Media and meet such extraordinary people. There is more to say about all this, and I will as soon as figure out how I'm going to say all of it!