Hi friends! So fellow aniblogger Arthifis, whom I greatly enjoy, has been posting some really helpful stuff recently on improving your blog. (Believe me, I’m making use of his tips as much as possible!) In his most recent one, he wrote about the importance of being yourself on your blog, and how that will attract more readers and reader engagement. That got me thinking.

What follows is my reflection on Arthifis’ post. Note the word “reflection”: I’m still working the ideas out in my head, and have only come to tentative conclusions. Also, a reflection is different from a response: I’m not disagreeing with his post, but rather trying to tease out more from his ideas and see where they lead. Ok, we academics can get really long-winded qualifying and hedging to make sure we’re not misunderstood. Let’s jump into the meat & potatoes.

First off, he makes some really important points, among which these are my favorites (i.e., those I found most meaningful):

  • We’re all writing about the sames shows and topics much of the time. To distinguish yourself from others, something has to be different. That something isย you. You know, your personality.
  • People are moving away from ingesting corporate media and turning towards personal media. Obviously, corporate media isn’t going anywhere (we are anย anime community, after all), but the balance has dramatically shifted. (Here we are, not only watching anime but discussing it at great length.)
  • It’s important not to get a big head when you have success as a blogger!

He also makes this statement which I found more intriguing the more I mulled it over:

“Thatโ€™s why I always tell you that showing your personality is the most important when writing content. Itโ€™s important to give your opinion, write/talk with no filters and just show yourself to the World.”

Here’s what I find fascinating: It sounds simple to “just be yourself”, but in point of fact that’s a really complex problem! First of all, what does it mean to be or have a “self”? What is a “personality”? (I’m going to use the terms “self” and “personality” as more or less the same here in this post.)

I’m not asking for dictionary definitions, nor do I mean to say let’s all go read Kierkegaard. (Although, now that I think about it, thatย would make the world a more interesting placeโ€ฆ!) Just be a bit existential for a moment and meditate: How do you understandย your personality, andย your self, as distinct from all others? Or is it in fact true that our personalities are distinct from others’? Is there any facet of who you are that you did not receive from someone else who also shared it? Family, teachers, friends, rivalsโ€ฆ all contributed a piece of who they are to form a piece of whoย you are. And you’ve done the same to them. Or if there is anything that didn’t come to you by way of personal interaction and experience, it came by way of your geneticsโ€”and that, too, you received from another.

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If you actually want to get started with Kierkegaard, this is the book I recommend. I read it back in high school, and no doubt it warped me.

Which raises another key nuance: How can you think of and talk about your personality, when that personality is constantly changing and evolving? The moment you think you know yourself, your self has already moved beyond what you think you know. Can you grasp a personality and say, “This is me”? Not really, at least not in any simple fashion. (And for the record, I don’t think Arthifis is saying that we should.)

So is the self more than an ever-shifting patchwork of influences picked up from others? Is there a core or aspect to your personality that is “you-and-not-others”? And if so, how do you find it? How can you describe it? The moment you use a word to describe yourself, you run the danger of wiping out what distinguishes you from anyone else who can be described by the same word. If I ask you about yourself, and you say, “I’m an otaku,” I’ve learnedย something about you, true; yet not only is every otaku an otaku in a unique way (or so it seems to me), but also every person understands the word “otaku” in a unique (though hopefully somewhat similar) way! All that nuance which distinguishesย you from all others like you gets lost.

Or take the word “white” as another example. What does it meanโ€”toย you? PicoPrimes, my little boy, toddled up to me the other day and asked, “Are you white?” Now, part of me immediately inferred that he probably wasn’t asking about my Caucasian origins; but being on vacation I didn’t feel like teasing out his exact meaning from his two-year-old brain. So I lazily just said, “Yes, I am. Areย you white?” He looked at his arms, then announced, “Nope.” “Then what are you?” “Silver!” And then I was caught in the beautiful moment of enjoying someone who can truly see colors because he hasn’t yet learned to “see color”. (I also observed that his understanding of “silver” was somewhat different from mine!)

So to put my own twist on what Arthifis says: When we say to just “be yourself”, we’re not talking about some fixed set of characteristics that are “you”; we’re talking about a fluid and ever-evolving process,ย and the process is you. A self is not something you get, like a cookie; it’s something you ride like a wave.* Your readers want to see you riding the wave; and the more fluidly you can accommodate the ordered yet unpredictable fluctuations in the wave, the more your readers will enjoy watching you as they come along for the ride.

 

Note

  • I’m tempted to say: “A self is not something you get like a cookie, but rather something you get like a disease.” But that opens up a whole range of potential meanings that I’d rather not get intoโ€ฆ

** Since I put in the affiliate link for the Kierkegaard book, I’m legally obliged to say:ย “As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.”

Thanks for reading!

13 thoughts on ““Know Yourself”: A Reflection on Arthifis’ Post on Personality”

      1. Oh, I didn’t mean to never answer this! I’m sorry!

        I guess I like it because how I define myself is something that I stress about a lot, so it’s nice to be reminded that it’s something that you don’t just pin down and define that easily. You just, Are you!

  1. Very interesting post. I love how you did a reflection on this because I read Arthifis’s post earlier so I knew exactly what you were referring to. ๐Ÿ˜€

    1. Thank you, Rose! I’ve been intending to do this kind of “reflection post” for a number of worthy writings by bloggers in our community. Glad I finally did one. ๐Ÿ˜บ

  2. You know that you just showed your personality in this post, right? XD Clearly you are someone who likes to understand things around and inside of you! ๐Ÿ™‚

    It’s a difficult question. I think it takes a lot of self-examination for you to get there! I did a lot when I was a teen and had depression. I also did the same later when I was faced with anxiety. Those were the main points of my life where I really got to know myself. Nowadays, it’s easy to understand me better and to get there. It’s true that we are always changing. However, I think the chore never goes away. To be honest, I didn’t really changed a lot from my teen years. The only thing I can say is that I got more confident over the years ๐Ÿ˜›

    Well, this would be a topic for many words! ๐Ÿ˜€ Maybe I’ll do it like you and just make a post responding to this post ahah xD That would be cool, right?

    Thank you so much for finding my post so interesting to think on responding it in a post! It means the world to me and you can’t believe how happy you made me xD

    1. No problemo! ๐Ÿ˜ธ And yes, that is indeed an aspect of my personality.

      Yeah, that would be totally cool! I’d look forward to your response.

  3. Okay, I can totally see why you submitted this post to Jonโ€™s Creator Showcase: because it showed some great personality (okay, that was a seriously bad pun ๐Ÿ˜‚).
    Iโ€™m going to be serious now though, this was a truly terrific post. I loved the fact how you really went ahead and though about Arthifisโ€™ post (seriously the guy is awesome), and took it in a direction that even he did not think it would ever go. Posts like these make you think, and eventually evaluate your own writings and take it to the next level ๐Ÿ˜€Thanks for submitting this one to the Creator Showcase.
    Sidenote: this is now the second time Iโ€™m going to break my own rule. I recently stated that I am at my limits to following blogs, because I just canโ€™t follow everyone as much as I would love to. But..I am again going to make an exception ( yesterday I made one too for the Spooky Red Head). I have seen you pretty much everywhere on wordpress, and after reading this: I just have to follow your blog. So this is me hitting that follow button ๐Ÿ˜Š๐Ÿ˜Š

      1. Haha, almost: itโ€™s Raistlin, but really totally cool! ๐Ÿ˜Š And you are welcome! (Weird that I show up as anonymous though…never had that happen to me before. WordPress is just full of the weirdest glitches these days ๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿ˜‚

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