Don't Peg Me

OK, that might sound like something my son tells my daughter when her arm is cocked with some kind of ball in hand. But I mean it in a different sense. I don't think any of us need to cling to a label. Once we do, our minds can go through changes it doesn't need.

For example:

Morning Person/Night Owl
The first thing I do once all my kids have been put on the bus is to run around the house in a cleaning frenzy. Seriously, I am most motivated to attack clutter and even the big messes before I sit down in front of the computer and get lost in cyberspace. 

But ask me to exercise in the morning? You might think I never work out from the excuses I give you. I do not do morning workouts. As a matter of fact, the later the better. I could go out for a run at 11:30 at night with no qualms at all. And I'm not even in college anymore!

So, you could call me a morning person, but you can't. You could call me a night person, but you can't. (If I'm not out running at 11:30 - and I'm usually not - I'm in bed.) So what am I?


Right Brain/Left Brain
Here's a funny story. I am a professional writer. (I won't say I write for a living, because I don't really make a living from it.) Anyway, I write every day. Doing it every day is supposed to make you better, right? 

Writing - organizing thoughts - is a "left-brained" activity. In other words, it's something that the left side of your brain controls. In general, all logic-based thinking, such as math and grammar are run by the left side of your brain. If you are better at those types of activities, then you are said to be "left-brained." 

The right side of your brain is the creative side. It's also known to be less organized. Artistic people are usually the strong "right-brainers."

Back to my story. For my job at church I had to write a letter. That should be a breeze for a left-brained writer, don't you think? I wrote it and gave it to the pastor to go over. He scratched his head and handed it to the secretary. Both were confused at how unclear it was. The secretary asked where my outline was.

Outline? Who writes with an outline? I just write. Because as hard as I work to be left-brained, I'm really right-brained. But I still LOVE to have things organized, and clutter drives me insane. Could it be possible, that I am NOT one or the other?

YES! You don't have to be a left-brained, ENTJ nerd whose learning style is visual and whose intelligence is linguistic. For goodness sake, you can just be Bob. Or Joe, or Sally, or Frieda. You can like sports and not be a jock. You can excel at math and not be a geek.

We're spending a little too much time trying to see what group we belong to, when really, we can hang out with anyone we like.

High school
Who were you in high school? Were you a jock? A rebel? A geek? One of the popular kids? 

I'm willing to bet you answered that you didn't belong to any one specific group. But chances are that your classmates remember you from a certain category. And it might even surprise you which group you are placed in!

I had a great conversation on Facebook with some of the people from my old high school. Our conversation gives credit to the above paragraph. Sometimes I look at my friend list and think, "Wow, I can't believe so-and-so is a friend of mind. S/he was so popular in school!" Then, I started having conversations with these "popular people." And you know what? They are just as real as I am. They are dealing with many of the same crazy things in life that the rest of us are. 

So here's the thing. You don't need a group. At age 40 now, it's easy to see that we can all branch out. (And after talking to a bunch of friends who are also 40, it's safe to say I'm not alone.) Remember in high school when the seniors wouldn't talk to the freshmen? Because there was a 3 year age difference? And now some of the people closest to us are 10-20 years older or younger. The number one requirement for talking to someone isn't how cool they are, how smart they are, or how they dress. It's how close they are standing to you and if they will look at you when are speaking to them.

There are no more "groups."We all just enjoy each other's conversation with the common background of having gone to the same school. It's quite freeing, and I can't wait until my kids escape the lock boxes of cliques in school to be able to enjoy real people. (And not just "computer people," "soccer people," etc.)


Does this mean we have lost our identities? I mean, who am I now? Well, I am a Christian wife and mother who writes books and works with kids at church. I've done a lot of other stuff, and I do a lot of other stuff. 

And if that comes up in conversation with the person next to me, then maybe I have a new friend. No matter what time of day she likes to go running.