Funny. Smart.
One of the things I never have been able to do is describe people. How can you, in a half dozen adjectives, give the gist of someone? Is it even possible? (Note: it is possible to do this for negatives, at least for me. Super easy for me to describe the negative aspects of people I know.)
But people ask for it, all the time. What’s so and so like? There’s no point in saying funny, everyone is or claims to be funny. What does funny mean? Do you like puns? Black humour? Sarcasm? No, you can’t say funny. What about smart, perhaps as distinct from clever? This doesn’t tell me anything useful about someone. (Plus, no one’s ever going to call their friends sort of stupid, really.) I often run out of adjectives, here, anyhow.
This is problematic, of course. I don’t want to tell seven long stories that I think are a good way to know what someone is like, in a sense. I cannot really write brief descriptions of myself for any of the many places online that ask you to. (Check it out: even my about page was written by someone else. It’s somewhat out of date, so should someone care to update it, or write me a new one, I would be much appreciative.)
I could, I suppose, tell anyone who wants to know about me to read this blog. I have three years of posts — nearly two thousand entries. That is a lot of information about me. But since I think most of the readers here haven’t read through all my archives (nor is there any reason they should, unless they are very curious, in which case, hey, have fun!), I couldn’t expect anyone else to. And that doesn’t help anyhow, the fact that thousands of words could add up to a description, of a sort. Of course they could, they can, but it’s not a useful one, I cannot respond to “tell me something about yourself” with “why don’t you read my blog instead?”
Nor would I want to. I like the separations I have between what I say and what I blog and what I do. It’s the separation between the story of this blog, a story which is trueish , and the story of me. As if there’s just one me, easily describable by a few adjectives.
July 28th, 2006 at 6:43 pm
Getting someone else to write a description is a great idea. I hate trying to describe people, or anything actually. I can’t even describe books or styles of music or buildings, where presumably there is some objective way of assigning at least certain classes of adjectives.
July 29th, 2006 at 9:31 pm
This is the same kind of problem that I have when someone ask me, “What do you two have in common?” Umm, we both like books? Who doesn’t? We both like to laugh? Because some people hate laughing? Etc.
July 30th, 2006 at 9:35 am
Lucy, is that an offer I hear? :)
I also have trouble describing things, not just people.
Sheepish, lots of people don’t like books. Weird but true! You could say that both of you obsessively write about your lives online, but I doubt that’s really the answer they’re looking for.
July 30th, 2006 at 10:49 am
I’ve had the same thought, that it would be great if I could just refer someone who wanted to know about me to my blog, except I’m nearing two thousand posts like you and they probably want something more concise. I’ve wondered whether a tag cloud from my blog would suffice instead.