#3: My struggles with Identity
Labels vs. Actions
Yo! The south shore swell was big last week so I made surfing a priority. By making surfing a priority, I’m dependent on Mother Nature and naturally the weeks fluctuate. I’m learning to enjoy the contrast between weeks because it ends up feeling more dynamic and more memorable. By the time I’ve surfed the majority of the week, I’m exhausted and need to rest and once the swell comes back, I know that I’ll be craving to be in the ocean again.
Growing up, I always felt like I was in the grey space between archetypes like the jocks or the nerds and never completely related to one group or another. Sports like basketball were a big part of my upbringing, but so was the ingrained self-expectation to get straight As. I was never part of one tight-knit friend group. Instead, I hung out with my basketball friends at practice, my nerd friends in AP classes, and my Chinese-American friends on the weekends (our families would all hang out together). In tracing the arc from my childhood to the present, it’s all starting to make sense on how I ended up with my current sense of self: one float-y amorphous blob of many things is frequently changing.
Recently, I started thinking more about Identity when I realized that what I enjoy doing clashes with the Labels that I had inadvertently assigned to myself. As an Asian guy living in San Francisco who works in tech, it’s hard to avoid the label of SF Tech Bro. Admittedly, I was and still am an owner of Patagonia fleece, airpods, and Allbirds - the holy trinity of the SF Tech Bro. If you saw me walking down Market St. you would think I fit right in with the rest of the dudes who only talk about crypto, credit card churning, and which hot startups are paying the most. However, on the inside, I was going through an internal dilemma because I realized I hate wasting my weekends on expensive brunch, talking about anything tech or work related at house parties, and don’t even know if I want to work in tech long term. I found myself drawn to things that get labeled as ‘hippie’ like yoga, vagabonding, and anything to do with nature. The shift was evident when I realized I no longer look up to tech entrepreneurs and instead am inspired by the creative artists and elite athletes of the world.
How do you answer “What do you do?”
When someone asks “What do you do?” do you answer with your job title or do you say something else such as your passion? In most cases, we default to our job title because society has hardwired us to make our job a core part of our identity. This default norm ends up excluding those who have jobs for the sole purpose of funding their art/passion/hobby.
My friend Kyle spent three years traveling the world as a freelance adventure photographer. Now that he’s rooted in SF, he’s switched to shooting street photography on film. One of Kyle’s favorite film photographers pursues his passion in all his free time, but also works full-time at Trader Joe’s. Coming from the tech world where every company’s mission statement is just a contorted bastardized version of “Make the world a better place”, it took me a while to realize that it’s totally valid to have a practical job that pays the bills so that you can pursue the other things that bring meaning to life.
One of the many reasons why I enjoy living in Hawaii is that this question comes up less often. I like hanging out with people and not knowing what their job is or feeling the need to ask. I still don’t know what some of my friends do for a living and I kinda like that. It’s kind of obvious that someone’s job doesn’t matter in the context of playing beach volleyball together or chilling at the beach, so why ask? It’s certainly a part of societal norms like how we always say “How are you?”, but I also think it’s just a weak attempt to find something in an effort to relate to others.
Labels vs. Actions
Lately I’ve been thinking about how to describe myself. Am I a skier or just someone who likes to ski? What’s the difference and does it even matter? To answer the existential question of “Who am I?” there are generally two options: Labels or Actions. Labels (painter, engineer, runner) are titles and more associated to one’s sense of identity than Actions (painting, coding, running) which are things that we spend our time doing, whether it’s for money or not.
Labels seem more serious than Actions in part because we always refer to our job with a Label rather than Action. If I hear someone is a ‘painter’, for some reason, I immediately think they make a living from painting as opposed to ‘someone who paints’ who could be doing it just for fun. It seems like Labels skew towards professionalism and high skill level whereas Actions reflects amateurism and playfulness. It makes sense given that ‘amateur’ originates from the Latin word amare which means ‘to love’. An amateur is pursuing the Action for the sake of enjoyment above all else.
The minimum skill level to have a Label
When describing myself with Labels, I feel like I have to carefully evaluate whether I am worthy of each Label. For example, I’m a pretty good skier so I’m comfortable with calling myself a skier, but I’m not sure if I would call myself a surfer. For now, I just say that I like surfing. I’m not saying this is right, but in order to accept and assign yourself a Label, it seems like there’s a minimum threshold in both skill and interest level.
When I first started skiing, I didn’t think of myself as a skier and now I do so I’m not sure when I changed and whether it was based on actual advancement or a shift in mindset. Thinking about this gives me a headache and I would rather just use Actions because they’re more flexible. For example, I wouldn’t say I’m a surfer right now, but if I say ‘I like to surf” then the range becomes wider. I could be a beginner who just tried surfing recently and got hooked, but I could also be surfing for years.
The limit of how many Labels you can have
I don’t know why this is the case for me or if this resonates with others, but I think there’s a limit to the number of Labels an individual can have. You can say that you’re a software engineer, painter and runner, but for some reason it feels like each additional Label that’s added to your identity is diluting the significance of the other Labels. You can definitely have multiple Labels, but there seems to be an inherent cap on how many can fit within the Identity Box. This ties back to the minimum skill level associated with Labels because given a finite amount of time, it’s impossible to be great at everything. On the other hand, describing yourself with Actions seems boundless because you can simply enjoy doing many things. Who’s going to stop and question a list of ten of your favorite activities? But try that with Labels and you might start to get questions about how good you are at those things or how you have time for everything.
When I think about how I would introduce myself via Labels, I feel conservative and reserved in how I present myself to the world. With Actions, I feel more comfortable sharing parts about myself that I’m interested in, but not yet great at like writing or photography. Viewing my identity in the form of Actions is not only more detailed, it’s also a more accurate depiction of who I am.
The fragility of Labels
Another problem with Labels is that they’re a one-way door. as soon as you say “I’m a skier”, you can’t go back. What if you move somewhere that’s not near the mountains or simply fall out of love with the sport? A year later, would you stop believing “I’m a skier” and lose that part of your identity? On the flip side, using Actions would go from “I enjoy skiing” to just the omission of that phrase. It just means that you stopped liking it, which honestly feels more organic and to be expected. Ultimately, removing a Label feels like losing part of your identity whereas dropping an Action is normal - people change over time and it’s natural for our likes and dislikes to evolve.
Ultimately, none of this matters
In a Reddit r/surfing thread “How long did it take you to comfortably be able to call yourself a surfer?”, there’s one response that sums it all up:
It doesn’t matter whether you use Labels or Verbs, it’s just about how you make sense of yourself and how much you value the various parts of your life. This is all semantics and is not going to make or break anything. This frame of thinking is just a tool for me to avoid setting any artificial limits on my path. I know that I’m interested in a bunch of different things and something tells me that I still have yet to discover some of those passions.
📚 What I’m reading
Let My My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard
Written by the founder himself, this is a wild story about Patagonia’s origins. They created their own gear out of necessity, were exploring truly unchartered territories, and frequently putting up first ascents. Yvon and his buddy literally ate cans of cat food for a while because of how broke they were. On a surf trip in Baja California, they drank dirty water so they drank charcoal straight out of their fire pit mixed with salt water in order to cure themselves. It makes me think about how today we have access to fancy lightweight gear, freeze dried meals, and a plethora of apps like AllTrails, Surfline, and OpenSnow, but none of that truly crucial or in the absolute essence of adventure.
🎵 What I’m listening to
a banger
🙏 Shoutouts
Shiv for her thoughts on identity in her newsletter which resonated with me
Jen for including a tweet in her newsletter that helped me decide to write about Identity this week
Leave a comment or message me on Twitter if you have any questions/feedback/ideas!
tbt to those amorphous blob toys — haven’t thought about those in 2 decades. Great piece!
Love the distinction between labels and actions, and how they might shape how you think of your path.