Tag Archives: identity

A thousand faces

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Way back in the 1970’s my parents bought me a doll for Christmas. His name was Hugo: Man of 1000 faces. Here’s a video of him.

He was creepy, but it was fun putting disguises on him, and he really looked different depending on what you added to his face.

We are more subtle. We too have thousands of faces, we just don’t wear them externally. We hold within us past experiences that shape and mold us. We react to events, experiences, and even conversations based on our exposure to related interactions, challenges, and hardships. We are clearly rational with some responses and blindly irrational with others.

We have the patience of Job with respect to a challenging situation, and yet for a small, almost insignificant other issue we snap in anger when things don’t go as they should. We demand control in some situations and easily go with the flow in other situations. And while there may be no external reason or rationale for why we treat these situations differently, there are internal, learned reasons why we react so uniquely.

Two people go through the same hardship and one has a trauma response while the other builds resilience and confidence.

We don’t experience events equally. For one person the response to a crisis is intellectual, for another it’s intuitive, and still another an uncontrollable, visceral body response.

We see ourselves as one person but we are many. We think we respond consistently to different events but we are nuanced and actually have many faces we project. This isn’t schizophrenia, it’s life. It’s the 1,000 faces we wear. It’s the framing we have built around the past experiences we’ve had, which are totally different than everyone else, even if the experiences were similar, even for siblings who share the same events in there lives.

Maybe that’s why this creepy doll, Hugo, was so much fun to play with. He embodied the physical representation of who we really are.

You’re so vain

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The lyrics of a Carley Simon song say, “You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you.”

I’ve heard again and again that this song is about James Taylor, whom she dated before she wrote this song. I’ve also heard that Warren Beatty believes it’s about him.

We all think that other people are thinking about us, that people are paying attention to us. In reality each person (to some degree) sees the world as revolving around them. This is especially evident in kids. It starts at a very young age when they play hide and seek, and they cover their own eyes believing that if they can’t see you, then you can’t see them. But then, all the way into their teens they see the world only through their eyes.

Then the grow up a bit, and they understand that the whole world isn’t seen from their perspective. Yet years later a small, passing joke about this now teenager may get a single laugh, and they believe that the entire world is laughing at them. Humiliation reigns when everyone else has already moved on to the next thing. 

Adults aren’t always better. They make a mistake and the closest they can get to an apology is “I am sorry you feel that way, that wasn’t my intention.” That’s not an apology, that’s ignorance of the hurt that you actually did. The unsaid part of that attempt at an apology is, “It’s absolutely your fault that you didn’t understand what I meant”. And I’m not sure who would consider that a real apology?

That’s vanity for you. In a young child it’s seeing the world only through your eyes. As a teenager it’s believing everyone is watching you. And as an adult it’s the belief that you are misunderstood but it’s not your fault. 

It takes humility to understand that you’re not all that important. It takes empathy to understand that other people think differently than you. And it takes honesty to recognize that your perspective is just one of many. Integrity isn’t built from a vain point of you, it is built from understanding that while the things you value are important, it’s also important to value the thoughts and opinions of people you care about.

And as cautionary tale, people who are vain do not deserve the same respect as those who are humble and wise. There is a difference between being humble, and being a pushover to people who do not give others the same respect that you do.

Own your own domain

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Background: In March of 2008 I purchased DavidTruss.com, DavidTruss.org, and DavidTruss.net. I didn’t start my blog on Google’s Blogger, or on Edublogs, or one of the ‘user-friendly’ blogging websites, I used Elgg, which I was invited onto by a friend, and it was clunky. To make changes to the look of my blog I had to play with the HTML. I often tried and failed, and I learned a lot that I would not have learned on an easier site. However, they sold out to Eduspaces, which in the transition killed a lot of my backlinks. Then it looked like Eduspaces was going to change again after I had spent hours cleaning things up, and I got fed up and decided to own my own domain name. I reserved the .com, .org, and .net as the most popular addresses, and I keep all 3 with the .org and .net being pointed to the .com site, (so if you go to DavidTruss.org it auto re-directs to DavidTruss.com).

I keep the .org and .net domains only for vain reasons… Search for David Truss online and you’ll probably find me for most of the links, and I like it that way. Maybe one day I’ll stop paying for the other domains, but for now, I will keep all 3 addresses. For a fun explanation of why my first blog was called ‘Pair-a-Dimes’ you can find the story here, under Why ‘Pair-a-Dimes for Your Thoughts’? For this Daily-Ink you can learn more by reading Why Blog Daily or The act of writing, where I coined my byline: “Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.” 

The current backdrop: That’s a lot of reminiscing, so what value am I going to add here? The reality is that it is getting more and more difficult to parse truth from lies, and deep fakes from actual audio and video clips. Things go viral without fact-checking, and it would be easy for someone malicious to spread misinformation about you, me, or anyone else. We know that lies spread faster than the truth in social media and this is only getting worse. Soon, you won’t be able to trust anything that comes to you on social media and what will matter most is where you get your information from. The sources you trust will matter, although even these you may have to evaluate. For those sources you don’t already know and trust will be handled with caution and doubt… even when the message is something you want to believe.

Why own your own domain? While you might think that deep fakes are things only celebrities and politicians need to worry about, the reality is that ‘regular’ people are already getting scammed with technology that used to cost thousands of dollars but can now be done free with AI tools. While your own domain won’t help with an impersonation scam like the one I just linked to, your digital identity will be much easier to misappropriate. My voice and image are on the internet. There are quite a few photos and videos of me online, and so there is enough data for someone to create an AI enhanced video of me saying whatever the culprits decide will be funny, insulting, mean, our downright disgusting. A funny version of this was a prank a former student pulled where he and other students uwuify’d some images of me while I was on a social media sabbatical. This was harmless fun, and never intended to impersonate me, but the technology is now there for anyone to do this.

Your domain means you control the narrative. Your own domain means that if something is being shared that you didn’t create, you can point to reliable information. If you have your own website, that’s where you can share your perspective on things, and it isn’t controlled by anyone else. Someone can create a Facebook profile that looks just like mine, and use my images on it. Someone can create a @davidatruss or @datruss1 account on Twitter and make it look like I’m the one saying what they want me to say. A Youtube channel would be just as easy to set up as well. Whereas DavidTruss.com is my domain. I own it. I control the narrative. And… I have a big enough digital footprint that people can see it’s not some site that was just put up a week ago. Does this make me bulletproof to a scam? Absolutely not! But it gives me some leverage to share my own voice if I do get impersonated.

Your domain, your words, your narrative.

Scam prevention: As a final thought, to prevent scams where family members are impersonated, have a ‘safe word’ that you share in times of distress. Not your pet’s name or anything like that. Choose a word that even people you might know wouldn’t guess, like ‘apricot’ or ‘gazebo’ or a phrase like ‘This is extra sauce important’!

Every single day

Some days it’s really hard to start writing. Today I stared at a blank page long enough that I realized I’d get nowhere stating longer, and so I did my meditation first. Then I thought, ‘I’m the only one that cares about my streak of writing every day, so what if I skip a day?’ And that was the right question to ask myself.

“So what if I skip a day?”

Well, it’s not just about breaking this streak, it’s the permission I give myself to be a streak breaker. It’s the identity that I’ve created that gets broken, not just the pattern. I’m a daily writer, I commit to writing, to putting something creative out into the world. Some days it won’t be great. Some days it will feel like a chore. Some days I’ll stare at a blank page for too long. But every day I’ll write.

“So what if I skip a day?”

If I do it intentionally, I’m opening a door to not being a daily writer. I’m giving myself permission to make exceptions every time it feels tough. Some days you just have to show up. It doesn’t matter if it’s going to the gym, dragging yourself to work on a day when you just want to stay under the covers, heading to a practice you don’t want to go to, or writing every day.

The blank page can be daunting, but it’s not scary, it’s just hard to look at. It’s not a beast, it’s a gremlin. And it’s not blank if you get one sentence down with a commitment not to erase that sentence until you are ready to replace it.

Daily writing is an identity based habit not a calendar based habit. I am a writer, and I can only say that if I’m writing. I live an active lifestyle, and I can only say that if I’m consistently staying active. It’s not about the act as much as it is about the identity. This is who I am. I show up, I get it done, and I know that I’ll do the same tomorrow. Skip a day? That’s a choice somebody else gets to make, not me.

Repeat performance

I just spent 25 minutes writing a post that I titled ‘Student Ambassadors’, then realized it seemed familiar. I went to my blog and did a search for the term ‘ambassador’ and found ‘Student led tours‘ which I wrote about 5-6 weeks ago. The approach was different but the examples and key message was identical.

If I’d written it 2 years ago I probably would have re-shared the idea, but the last post was too soon and so now I write about the similarity of the posts rather than writing the post itself. I know I’ve also shared something similar to this before but sometimes writing daily is really hard. Coming up with novel ideas to write about is challenging. Not repeating some of those ideas is even more challenging.

Do you ever realize that you have specific ‘go to’ stories that you share? Certain memories that come up again and again, that you share with equal enthusiasm every time you share them? We have a model of who we are and we have stories that represent that model for us. We don’t try to be novel all the time, we are consistent, and we tell the same stories consistently.

So, I’ll repeat myself sometimes. Like today, if I recognize that I’m doing so, I will pivot and pick a new topic, or I’ll try to give a new idea on top of an old one… but sometimes I will not realize I’ve shared something before, and in those cases I apologize for the repeat performance.

All of me

I’m having a bit of an existential moment. It occurred to me that I do not end where my body ends. I do not begin where my body begins.

This morning I went outside to do my morning stretches and a cool breeze gave me goosebumps. My body involuntarily responded to the environment. This made me think of how much our environment influences who we are. We shiver, we sweat, we find it easier or harder to breathe. Stairs affect us going both up and down them. Rain, snow, wind, temperature, all affect our comfort level. So does availability and kinds of food that sustain me. I am not me without considering my environmental surroundings.

This morning I went for a walk with my wife. At one point she picked up the pace to a jog, and I picked up my pace to join her. We are social beings and those around us affect us. We may have choice, but we are not without influence of others: A boss asking us to do something, a friend wanting company, an aggressive driver yelling obscenities, an upset person in need of compassion and support.

A question asked in a good or bad tone can affect our answer, and can affect our physiology. A disagreement can lead to conflict, anger, and even physical violence. Words can hurt, bring joy, frustrate, and enlighten. I am not me without considering my social surroundings.

The physical and social environment I surround myself with help define me, help me develop my personality, my disposition, my attitude, and my identity. All of me includes my environment, and includes my social connections. I do not end where my body ends. I do not begin where my body begins.

I am more than what you see, I have an extended identity.

Don’t share their names

It’s so senseless and sad. A radicalized idiot with a gun in Buffalo has taken the lives of innocent people.

I saw this response on TikTok, and the title of the post is ‘Don’t say their names’. I’ve said this before, and explained myself in a footnote:

*I referred to the person who murdered children and educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown last Friday as ‘Idiot with a gun in Newtown’. It would be a whole other blog post to speak of how horrible our news media is at iconicizing (not sure if that’s a word) murdering, evil, or deeply disturbed people who commit violent acts. On this principle, I do not name this murderer here. I chose to convey him as a nameless ‘Idiot with a gun in Newtown’. If that offends you, sorry.

When someone like the idiot with a gun in Buffalo commits such a senseless act, part of their desire to follow through with this is to be known. They know that their manifesto will be shared. They know newscasters will peruse their Facebook and Instagram pages and put images of them on the news. They know their name and face will be mentioned and shared.

They don’t deserve the acknowledgment. They deserve to remain nameless. They don’t even deserve the image of their face to be shared. Idiots with guns, that’s what they should be known as. Idiots. Nothing more. Let anyone thinking of doing this in the future know that they will be forgotten. That’s what they deserve.

Staying ‘on brand’ while being digitally present

A few months ago, I shared a link on Twitter to an article about James Fridman’s Twitter Account. People send James photos to Photoshop and he changes the photos in entertaining ways. Like this:

And like this:

But the ‘Featured Image’ on the post I shared was of a girl in a bathing suit who James had done one of these photoshop requests for. I shared it and then I got a Direct Message from someone in my community that I respect, who said she was surprised that I would share something like this. In all honesty, I didn’t think much of it, so I looked at the tweet again and thought two things. First, that it wasn’t a big deal that I shared a photo of someone in a bathing suit because this was about photoshop humour. Then I thought, ‘Would I share this photo on its own if it wasn’t for the article going with it?’… and I realized I wouldn’t. So, I deleted the tweet and shared one specific tweet that highlighted James’ humour, like the two tweets above.

Yesterday, I got a phone call from my sister about one of my Daily Ink blog posts. She said to me that while she understood the point I was trying to make, I came off as a bit full of myself in an unflattering way. She was right. That wasn’t my intent, but I could totally see how it could be interpreted that way. I went back to the post and made some minor changes, which I think changed the tone of the post to one that was more about my intention as opposed to mistaken interpretation.

I share a lot online. If you were to look at 100 of my blog posts, here on Daily Ink, or on my Pair-a-Dimes educational blog, or if your chose to read 100 of my tweets, I think you could learn a lot about me. I think you could get a good sense for my character, what I stand for, and what kind of a person I am. However, if you chose to judge me on my worst blog post or my worst Tweet, well then I’m sure I wouldn’t look so good. I recognize that, and I’m happy to take a look at my worst blog posts and tweets, and change or delete them. That said, I know more will come later. If I’m going to share as much as I do, I’m going to occasionally share something ‘off brand’, something that doesn’t generally fit with my identity or at least my digital identity.

I touched on this a bit in my post, Ideas on a Spectrum, where I noted that there seems to be a culture of attacking a person based on not liking their opinion or a statement they share online. I on the other hand am fortunate to have people around me that are respectful and thoughtful. The person who sent me a Direct Message about my tweet could have said something in a reply, in a public setting, to me but instead chose to send me a private message. My sister could have thought, ‘Well, that’s not like Dave’ and then let it pass by, but she gave me a call and said, “I know this isn’t what you intended, but you should know that this is how I read it.”

Public comments can help too. I really appreciated Stephen Downes helping me identify the context of a meme that I shared as my photo to go with a post. See Once upon a meme where I discussed this. Stephen said in a comment that he wouldn’t be comfortable using the meme and named the meme so that it would be easy for me to find information about it. He gave me what I needed to be informed in a pubic, but very respectable way.

These are people I want in my lives. People who know me, or I guess you could also say, ‘know my brand’, and who help me stay on course. I’ll make mistakes, and because I share a lot digitally, I’ll be making those mistakes in public. I appreciate having a community that recognize that mistakes are mistakes, and who are willing to help me.

Pride parade

Today is the Vancouver Pride Parade. 🏳️‍🌈

The theme this year is “50 Years and Still Fighting”.

It amazes and saddens me that in this day and age we are still talking about the struggle for equity for all. We live in a pluralistic society, and yet race and gender identity are things we need to explicitly recognize, with thought and intention, rather than pretend we don’t see it, or that it doesn’t matter (anymore).

But today is a celebration, a chance to put differences on display, surrounded by colour, music, and wonderful people in a beautiful city.

Wear your pride ‘out loud’ today!