In Sarah’s recent post The Tangle of Privilege, she discusses the difficulty of being yourself in a culture where you don’t fit in. It doesn’t matter if it is your culture. That brought to mind a piece I just wrote for ECN How to manage creative types (with a minimum of fuss). My original title was Rebellious Anti-social Self-centered Psychopath. Which just goes to show you how far I have gone in an effort to not fit in. In fact my editor did not want to print the piece because I put myself in such an unfavorable light. In addition what kind of magazine would employ such a person? I think telling him “I’m at home in my skin” turned the tide.
The only comment to the piece so far is one that says getting feed back on being managed from a person being managed (how is it working for you?) was very helpful.
So who do I hang with when I want a common culture? All the other people that don’t fit in. Quite an interesting lot. And the best part about it? You don’t have to fit in. At least not perfectly. And mostly not very well.
Comments
2 responses to “On Being Yourself”
At risk of being 1990-ish and AOL-uncool…me too! And at least I didn’t quote your whole post and then say “me too!”
More seriously, those of us who don’t fit in, AND have a tolerance for those who don’t fit in (with us) are few, far between, and definitely worth cultivating as friends.
Well Simon, I am far from rebellious, and a-social rather than anti social. I can easily be called self centered since I waste most of my time setting my mind to chase its tail in search of me, but this is as close to ‘hanging’ with non family as you’ll ever catch me. I do have a somewhat friendly concept of you, Eric, Dave, Sarah, Kathy and others I’ve interacted with here. I hope each of you fare well in all things.