Writing My Own Story

Being a one-woman operation here, getting ready for an EP release means that I do everything. I'm the webmaster, the graphic designer, the publicist, and the distributor, as well as the singer/songwriter/pianist/producer. It means that when I have a particularly bad case of insomnia, I use the extra hours awake to redesign my Myspace (yes, I haven't recognized that site's futility enough to delete mine yet) and decide on a font for the EP cover.

It also means that I have to write my own bio.

Writing my own biography is hard. Not just because it's awkward (though also amusing) to quote myself. But because so many different stories make up my life and I have to choose just one arc, make it neat, and have it end sounding like I've arrived at some destination of maturity/self-actualization/blah blah.

I'm an introvert with many floating "free traits" that I'm in the habit of presenting in different combinations. I'm used to telling different parts of my story to different people. And now I have to choose one and let it be how the world sees me?

I choose the preacher's kid arc because it's the most concrete. It's something unique about me— much more interesting than, for example, the story of struggling to be okay with doing music rather than continuing to pursue academics— and it's a big part of my identity. But it's hard to convey that story to people who haven't lived it. The bio makes it sounds like I've built my identity on rebelling against that role, but that's not it. I still play that role every day.

The problem with making that "my story" is that it makes it seem like the book is closed. In reality it's hard to make understood something that I don't even completely understand myself.

I guess that's why most people wait until the end of their lives to write autobiographies— to have the insight that comes with hindsight.