"Isn't that what it's all about? Why we dig up the past? To understand it." (Lara Croft)

"If everything is important, then nothing is."
     - Patrick Lencioni

While I don't have much use for the work of people who write books about how to "cure" dysfunctional businesses, the quote by Patrick Lencioni rings true to me; it runs through my thoughts from time to time as I write this blog, too.

  

On the subject of blogs, I notice that there's a tendency I see quite a lot in the works of people who write their own biographies online; it's a tendency people often have where they try to make every single moment hugely important, mostly through the benefit of hindsight.   

I don't speak here of people sharing histories that feature dramatic moments.  I'm talking about people whose every living moment is described in their own words as if having a regular lunch is of cosmic importance to them, and on a daily basis.

I think it hurts the writing, and the message.  I think it creates a sort of mass-produced flavor which might be enjoyable, but which detracts in its sameness.  

It's true of any media, whether you're talking about blogs or lunches - make everything BIG, and you end up with results that lose touch with any kind of real human emotion.

Worse, I think it can often strain believability in what a person is trying to say, with the obvious danger being that any message about human truth gets lost in the parade of drama and the pageantry of self-indulgence. 

This isn't to say that I don't believe someone who claims to have had some kind of earth-shattering revelation about themselves, of course.

  

What it does suggest to me, though, is that a person whose every blog entry is about how their lives were forever changed - and where those changes come on a daily basis for them - might perhaps be exaggerating, or may be the sort of person who is easily swayed into adopting one school of thought or another on a regular basis.

In other words, the more often someone tries to tell me in their writing that they've had a daily stream of earth-shattering events, and the more they crow about those events, the less I'm inclined to think a person is really thinking about what's happened to them with any kind of self-analysis.  It tends to say to me that they're looking at the drama, and not the way real life affects us, because real life is messier than tidy drama, messier than  wrapped-up sitcom epiphanies.

 

 

I'm sure some bloggers might be offended by this.

I'm sure there are people out there who'd insist that every word they say on their blogs is true, and that their lives have more drama than all the classic Italian operas put together.

 I'm sure for some people that might even be self-perceived as true.

We humans all have a tendency to try to find connections in our lives and in our world, and that can lead to finding some kind of Unified Field Theory for everything that happens to us.  I don't happen to subscribe to this belief, but I certainly understand it and why it might be appealing.

For me, though, the truth about writing about my own life comes only in realizing that everything that happens to me in my life is both important and totally meaningless, that my history is fluid, that my point-of-view is shaped by the totality of my life experiences rather than a series of slate-cleaning moments that eradicated my former self and created someone totally new or reveals some kind of hidden conspiracy guiding my path.  That never happened to me, and I don't believe it happens to other people.  Connections aren't conspiracies.  They're just a road we travel.  They're fun to find, but they don't necessarily mean anything to anyone but ourselves.  And that's fine.  That's what biographies like this ar for - to share those connections and those important-AND-unimportant realizations.  Read at your own pace and at your own risk.  

I think people out there in the world often feel isolated and alone, and feel desperate to share their stories in the hopes that they can find some kind of connection to other people, to find connections in the world that may exist only in their imaginations.

That loneliness is, I think, key to why they try to say their life is a daily fireworks show.  I think many people feel terrified that their lives won't seem exciting enough to satisfy a public that's voracious for content, that enjoys voyeuristically looking at other people's lives.  But I think it's ultimately bad for truth, writing that way.  That's why I made a promise to myself to tell the story of my life with both the good and the bad, the boring and the exciting - and to tell it as I really see it, even when it's not that exciting to anyone.  My hope in setting out on this adventure, of writing my biography online in blog form through the lens of these inspirational women, is to help people feel a human connection to me, and an emotional one at that.

I believe that understanding the trans children of tomorrow means understanding the trans adults of today, and part of that is understanding the reality of the things that happen to me.   I believe that sharing my stories will assist people who might never otherwise feel empathy toward trans people to see that I'm a human being.

I even hope that some of the people out there who hate LGBT people will perhaps stumble across my blog and read it.  I want them to, in fact.  I want them to understand.  I want to reach them.

At the same time, I don't think I necessarily will reach them.  I'm hopeful, but I recognize that people like to live in their own worlds with their own comfort.  Blogs are a part of that.  I reach out to people - and if they're willing to read this blog they're probably already sympathetic to me as a person.  I don't tend to read the blogs of religious people, or right-wing conservatives, or racists.  Maybe I'm being hypocritical there.  I probably am, in fact.  So this begs the question - why do we all do this?  Why do we recreate our histories and expect people to say and do things we know they'll never do?

I think it's because of the nature of human beings to aspire.  I think it's because of our nature to strive despite our mortality.  People realize that we're walking an uphill climb toward that mortality, and as a result there's the desire to have more progress made than what we've achieved; and no matter how much we've done or accomplished, there's the desire for it to mean more, to have meant more so far in pour lives.  In other words, we're never truly satisfied with who we are, and as a result that can lead to the yearning to rewrite our history, to try to represent ourselves as people we're not.  Or, in my case, to daydream about being someone else, of going on adventures as the heroic women in this blog.  I'd be lying if I said I don't still, even as a grown adult, daydream about being these women fighting against injustice, flying across the globe, or raiding ancient tombs.

In my case, one of my favorites to think about in this way - as someone I imagine myself being - is Lara Croft, the highly-athletic heroine who first appeared in the TOMB RAIDER series of games.   So, yes, to this day I still daydream about being Lara Croft.  But I already know that this is a tough road for people to accept.  In fact, the executive producer of the latest adventure for Lara, a game simply called LARA CROFT, doesn't believe any gamer - male or female - wants to be Lara Croft, as seen in the following quote from him.

"When people play Lara, they don't really project themselves into the character.  They're more like 'I want to protect her.'  There's this sort of dynamic of 'I'm going to this adventure with her and trying to protect her.'"
     - Ron Rosenberg

I think he's wrong.  He's definitely wrong for me, and for how I've played these games.

But that doesn't change one thing:  I know he's wrong, because he's wrong for me.

"The ability to see her as a human is even more enticing to me than the more sexualized version of yesteryear.  She literally goes from zero to hero ... we're sort of building her up and just when she gets confident, we break her down again."
     - Ron Rosenberg

There are a lot of issues I take with this quote.  Chief among them:  apparently, in Ron Rosenberg's world, a sexualized woman isn't a human being.  Women are either sexualized or human.  No, Ron - women are sexualized because of a patriarchal society, but that doesn't mean that they're not human.  Likewise, it's interesting to note that apparently Ron thinks if a woman is sexualized he can see her as non-human and "get away" with that.  

Now, it could be - and has been - argued that what he's saying here is that he's not referring to actual people but rather a collection of pixels that only existed as a sexualized image versus his goal to make the character more "human."  I understand that and I get that.  But one's motives don't change one's prior actions in reality from one thing to another, much less if they're misguided.  

"She's definitely the hero, but -- you're kind of like her helper.  When you see her have to face these challenges, you start to root for her in a way that you might not root for a male character."

     - Ron Rosenberg

It's great to know Ron Rosenberg is rooting for women to succeed and to stop being sexualized and for men to be helpers for us to do well in life when we need that extra moment of button-mashing to help us make the big decisions; because, of course, Lara wouldn't know to get out of the way of big spinning blades of death unless her man-helper in the real world told her to dodge them through his frantic pressing of the 'X' button.

But that's all the snark I'm really going to throw toward Ron Rosenberg.  He's got a right to his opinions, of course, and of late I've tried to give people the rights to their opinions and not to assume that they mean the most negative thing possible.  Some people close to me have told me that my blog seems to be about negativity and bitterness, and that's not my goal - not at all.  While I think it's important to point out where I think things are going wrong in the perceptions of the general public or specific people, I also recognize that they might think I'm wrong, too, as I said earlier in this piece.

But, ultimately, the positivity is what I want to talk about in terms of why I love Lara Croft.  What I love about her isn't her "sexualized" nature.  What I love is what I consider Lara's greatest super-power:  her confidence.  That's why I daydream being her, and that's why I think it's wrong to try to rewrite one's own history, even though it's something we all - to a degree - are guilty of doing.  Because of this, we all need to face the fact that all our histories are silly.  All our histories are boring.  All our histories are pointless.  And all our histories are bland, filled with brushing teeth and waiting for the microwave.  Worst of all, our histories are filled with mistakes.  And our mistakes, unlike the mistakes of fictional characters, can't ever be undone or just written out of existence.  My own history is filled with mistakes.  

It's been said that if a person reads every issue of THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN from start to finish, the story won't make a lot of sense as a long, single narrative.  It won't even tell an actual coherent story.  What's funny about this criticism, to me, is that it means, in a way, that it's closer to real life than a lot of narratives, because our own stories don't really make any sense as a continuing narrative.  

If there is such a thing as fate or destiny guiding us, it means it's likely written by committee and that the creative team changes hands every couple of months, just like in comic books.  

In a comic book, or novel, or movie ... the mistakes made are there for those fictional characters on the page, but they can be simply written out of existence. There's no responsibility.   In a video game, our mistakes can often be fixed just after they happen by restarting a game or going back to the last moment you saved your progress.  Really, they're not even our mistakes - they're Mario's.   In a sense, Ron is correct in his quote above - because we don't bear any of the responsibility for what happens in a video game, to that video game world.  Imagine if all the Marios we ever "killed" returned to haunt us.   

In real life, I've made so many mistakes it hurts to even think about them.  I once threw a tantrum - in college - where I refused to see my parents even though they'd driven 2 hours to see me.  They dropped off a gift and then went home without me even acknowledging them.  At age 8, I took my grandparents' beloved elderly dog Sherman out on a run when my grandparents explicitly told me not to - and he got into a brutal fight where another dog attacked him so viciously he broke a leg trying to defend himself.  I've abandoned people I cared about, simply because it was the easier choice.  I've been cold and callous to people.  I've been cruel to people.  I've focused on other people's failures while ignoring my own.   

If my life were a video game, it wouldn't probably be any fun for other people to play.

But I think this is true with everyone, and I think this is also why people DO play video games, and specifically why many people like to play video games with narratives.  I know I do.  And the reason I do is because I can find that inspiration in the tidiness of the characters' narratives.  As I said, it's comforting - it's comfort food, really.  Lara's a good example of this.  She's noble, brave, courageous ... and, above all, confident.  

But there's a danger, a danger few people think about, in finding this kind of inspiration.  My best friend, Matt, pointed it out to me when he observed that the problem with finding inspiration in a fictional character like Lara is that we only find inspiration from the end result, and not from the journey or the struggle.  There's a lot of truth to it.  It's easy to be "inspired" by someone who's already confident, where we haven't had to see or experience or deal with ourselves the struggle to arrive there at that confidence.  That the confidence involved comes out of battles with giant dinosaurs leaves that confidence further detached from the reality.  

But I think that this confidence is more of a goal than a trait we admire the way we would a real person's personality.  It's why I only daydream about being Lara Croft, instead of making it an active wish on my part to live in an imaginary world in an imaginary life.  I don't even WANT to live in some kind of fantasy world where I want to actually be Lara Croft when I'm walking around in the real world, mainly because fighting dinosaurs seems exhausting to me.

What I get out of daydreaming about being Lara, about being inspired by her, about pretending in my mind while playing the video games about her adventures that I'm going on those adventures as Lara, is something else entirely, and it's different from the kind of inspiration I might get from, say, thinking about the struggles of Harriet Tubman, one of my real-life personal heroes.

What I get out of all that is the joy of immersing myself in that fantasy - the joy, itself, in NOT living in a messy world of nonsense and silliness of a different variety than that found in the games.  Specifically, by allowing myself the fantasy of Lara's world, I can think for a brief time as if the greatest problems of my own life are the zip-line in front of me, the cliff overhead, and - yes - even a giant dinosaur.   And what's funny about that is that a giant dinosaur, in its simplicity as an obstacle, can be a more relaxing challenge than even the most basic real-life one, because of real life's complications and ridiculous nonsense.  Magical swords and ancient curses pale in comparison to the sea of real-life situations we face every day that can't simply be solved, that never identify they've been solved - that simply come and go, endlessly, every day.

Those daily complications can become overwhelming for us, and so comes the need to be entertained, and for me comes also the need for stories, the need to live in a simplified world for brief junkets where I see the obstacles and can defeat them and - most of all for me - can know when they've been defeated.  It's a relief from challenges that don't stop.  Key, though, is understanding that we mustn't ever live in that other world, or allow it to overwhelm us.  That's why I try my hardest to write about myself in this blog, to avoid writing about characters I didn't create as if I'm somehow entitled to them.  We mustn't do that.  We must create our own worlds, and our own stories.  And this blog is mine - my story, with special guest appearances by amazing women both real and imagined. 

When I play these games, read these comics, watch these movies ... I get to spend brief moments of time in those simplified worlds, and there's tremendous joy and relaxation in that.  It's why I think of media as leisure, and not as a way of life.  There was a time when I was so unhappy with my own life that I spent incredible amounts of lost and wasted time living in those fiction worlds.  I look back on those memories with sadness because that's time I can't ever get back.  

Some people might argue that this blog is a similar waste of time.  But I like to think it's putting a part of myself out there for others to read and experience.  If it ever reaches an end-point, it will hopefully serve as a biography no different than those written by people on paper.  This blog is about me, not about these women.  They have their own biographers, but I'm the only author of my own life.  My life isn't a book or a movie.  It's the real thing.

Of course, if they were ever to decide to make a movie out of my life, I wouldn't mind being played by Angelina Jolie.