Waves of Selfhood

Every now and then, I am really Meghan. I call this a period of selfhood. And they come in waves.

Just looked at my Twitter feed and realized I am not currently riding a wave of selfhood. Instead, since Ignite and my dreaded waffle-y blog post (see comments), I've been in what I like to call damage control mode. And when I'm trying to control damage, I become less Meghan and try much harder to be who I think I ought to be, which usually means trying to be other people.

But I'm not other people, damn it! I'm Meghan. And I'm a geek. I love puns and beer and care about the nonprofit industry some but much more about content, ideas, and strategy. I eat a lot, much too much, and have a very unhealthy relationship with food. About seven times a day, I visualize myself eating a cheeseburger, pizza, or an enormous ice cream sundae. Coffee and sunny days make me indescribably happy. I have terrible taste in music, loving anything I can sing off-tunedly to while I'm driving alone. I have no idea why spell check would identify "off-tunedly" as a real word in that previous sentence but not this one. I use "whom" correctly when I'm speaking and cringe when I accidentally end a sentence with a preposition or choose the wrong first-person pronoun. My favorite colors are black and gray, and I love giant earrings. On the weekends, I prefer drinking and watching terrible movies with my husband to being in a noisy, crowded bar, but I am extremely energized by social interaction. Making a room full of people laugh is the second best feeling I know. The best is loving unconditionally.

And I could go on, as anyone could. But my point is that my Ignite presentation was, frankly, the most Meghan I've been in months. Then I apologized for it. Then I apologized for apologizing for it. And since then, I've been in a state of panic, worrying about recovering from my own neuroses. Consequently, I've lost my selfhood. And people don't like you when you're not yourself.

So, no more. I've got some Meghaning to do, and I'm not going to apologize for it this time.

Off to a bridal shower. Here's hoping the bride likes her gift.