Why I decided to change my medication and move across the country at basically the same time, I really have no idea. That, the stress of spending so much money, and figuring out how to live with someone really makes an explosive cocktail of emotions. Nothing bad, just all new.

This has led myself and those closest to me, to realize that I don’t really know myself. So has begun an extensive journey of self discovery, where I have been attempting to relearn everything about myself, down to basic likes and dislikes. I wrote down a list of likes as simple as my favourite colour, and there are even more things still that I don’t actually know the answer to.

Despite all of this, I think that rather than try and find myself, I should set out to create myself. I should decide who I want to be instead of trying to find a theoretical person. I think a lot of things will carry over, but starting fresh is sometimes easier.

My partner mentioned something very similar to this. She said that she found herself through intense curation. Pinterest was and still is her go to in order to continue that practice. I think my next step is to figure out what the equivalent platform is for me. Maybe scrap-booking? Where do I curate myself? What medium? I think this website is already a step in the right direction, a place that belongs to me and is unabashedly me. But the curation part is the toughie. 

I think that interestingly, I have already curated an online persona that is detached from my “real” self but it’s much more robust than I am. LarceHobbit, the name I use online, exists outside of myself, but is almost more real than I feel I am now. This persona has its own interests- LarceHobbit likes anime, and cartoons of all kinds; his email is filled with promotions from games and movies. I also relatively recently created Lanceatthelakes specifically as a music alter ego. His music taste has been expanding over the past few years and is more robust than it has ever been. But is all of this still me? Are these some segmented persona/different personality that washes over me when I am online? It’s so separate from anything that has my Government name attached to it, but that was the point. Obviously I shouldn’t change everything to my real name, that’s like rule #1 of the internet. I don’t want to kill Larcehobbit, I really don’t, but maybe I should set out to merge him and I into one.

/

Imagine a puzzle. You are given the borders already put together, but you get the box and it’s just… blank. No picture or image to guide you in finishing. That’s how everyone starts out, so not so unusual. Over time, your experiences help you shape many different parts of the puzzle- your worldview, your loved ones, anything and everything contributes to the overall picture. I know that I have that border, just like everyone else. And I have a lot of the pieces, I think. But they aren’t fitting, and some of the larger sections have single mystery pieces right in the middle. So now I have to try and find those pieces, find the image, and find the way everything fits together, because it has to, right?