Who I am.

I recently bought a URL to house my entire online persona. I’d wanted to do so for a while after I came across a few websites where people have a landing page with two links – personal or professional. I knew instantly I wanted to do this, but kept giving excuses – no time, I’m not a good enough designer – so that I didn’t make the website.

Then, I spent 8 hours in a car with my best friends on the way to their wedding in late July. While they were being mushy and listening to the Moulin Rouge soundtrack, I put The Black Keys on my headphones and knocked out this design pretty quickly:

It’s not perfect, it’s not amazing, but it works. I honestly spent more time writing the text for the front page than I did making the graphics in Photoshop and chopping it up to put it in Dreamweaver. After several hours of thinking, this is what I came up with for my biography:

Like most twentysomethings, I’m pretty neurotic. I’ve spent years developing online personas for companies and clients, but never found the right inspiration to create a singular, themed online persona for myself.

That’s because there’s no one thing that describes me. I’m a blogger. A knitter. A cat lady. A social media and nonprofit communicator. A graphic designer. A media consumer. A music and film buff. A perfectionist. A beer-drinking-sports-loving-girly-girl. A friend. A daughter. A big sister.

I keep thinking about this nearly a month later. I’ve realized I’m gaining more and more insight into a new aspect of myself every day. I used to have it all figured out, or I thought I did. As I get older, I realize that the more you think you have it figured out, the less you actually do. The more and more you try to control things in life, the more and more life decides to knock you back down to size.

I wasn’t always this way: I used to try to control every situation I entered into. I used to be a lot of things. A straight-A student. A competitive figure skater. A journalist. A healthy person (mono in college has significantly changed my overall health). A picky eater. A recluse. A snob. A roommate. A girlfriend. I’m no longer any of those things.

This all changed when I didn’t graduate from college when I was supposed to. After some Major Life Events, I was three classes and a thesis short of graduating in May 2007. Not only did these events change the course of my college career, but they also woke me up to a new lifestyle: one that was more accepting of others and willing to try new things.

Everything I’d done up until that point was perfect, yet it caused imperfect things to happen to me. I thought the things I did in high school and college would set me up on this perfect path to fulfill all my dreams, but it didn’t. If I didn’t start putting myself in new situations and trying new things, I’d only set myself up for failure again.

Now, I’m constantly learning that who I am is something I’m figuring out every day.