@ScalesAndCleverness
On Social Media Handles and Personality/Identity
Ideas are coming out of me faster than I can write them. I’m getting increasingly frustrated by the structure of daily life that limits the time that I have available to actually sit down and write, since I still rely on a day job to pay the bills. But it would be incredibly reckless and a poor financial decision to just quit that, right? Right?
I spent so many years, even most of high school and college, being helplessly undecided. Seeing the great wealth of options and industries out there and being so excited and intrigued by all of them. And having essentially no idea which of them I wanted to dedicate my life toward. I would write reflections about the speeding train of life, and worrying that I’d spend so long deliberating my desired destination that I’d either fail to get on entirely, or I’d find myself mistakenly en route to a destination I did not choose carefully enough and I’d suddenly realize it was not what I wanted. But I’d have no way to get off the rushing locomotive.
Now, all of a sudden, I’m filled with conviction and purpose. I know what I want to do. I know how I want my life to look.
All the sudden it’s effortless to craft the “this is who I am and what I want and why” narrative, because it is real and true and me. I read aloud for fun as a kid. I journaled and wrote for fun my whole life. I studied social studies, math, and science with equal zeal. I entered college as a STEM kid, pivoted to humanities, and found the field of “Science & Society.” I’ve worked as a medical scribe, a paralegal, a substitute teacher during the pandemic, and a student organizer. I want to write about health, science, culture, and policy. And maybe even teach it someday, in a Science and Society program!
With that conviction comes…impatience. I want to start! Like a wind-up toy that has been cranking and ruminating for ages, and is practically jittery with the pent-up energy inside as she waits to be placed on the floor and released!
Future Posts and Topics
I’ve backed off a bit from being quite so rigid with my posting schedule here (and the overall “plan” for putting things out in a meticulous process). I still want to examine landmark supreme court cases, starting with the case I already began working on - Buck v. Bell. But I also want to allow myself freedom and flow; to post about what strikes my fancy and what is incredibly unique to my experience. Rigid deadlines and stipulations to stay on topic will come with time, as I acquire editors and get contracts for my writing. But for now, the only boss is me.
Of the multitude of drafts and ideas I have in the drafts folder, the most likely to be ready-to-post in the near future include such topics as:
Wicked and the choice to fight the system from outside vs inside and the benefit/detriment of both options - but how they can work in tandem.
College degrees waxing and waning in popularity, and the new challenges to a “traditional education” in a post-AI landscape
Health, fitness, and exercise. The unique challenges women face. How politics and identity factor into what we choose (or even have access to).
Women’s sports (on the rise) and what history can tell us
Feminism, the “trad-wife” phenomenon (and myth), and “girl boss” vs. homemaker, etc. (Maybe even as it pertains to the dialogue around Taylor Swift)
For now: A Fun-to-write Note on Identity
My handle on Instagram is “@scalesandcleverness.” I imagine it confuses people, but maybe no one even stops to think long enough to question it. Either way, allow me the indulgence of explaining my thought process.
I grew up in the generation for whom Harry Potter played a formative role in our grade school and middle school years. We all took the Pottermore quizzes to find out which house we would be in. Somewhere along the line, I did get Ravenclaw at least once. But all the other times - I got Slytherin. *gasp*
Speaking of quizzes, we were also the Buzzfeed generation. We glommed onto anything that claimed to assign us a meaningful identity based on what coffee cup we chose or what kitchen we most liked. I took it a step further, as many of us did, and had a whole summer’s worth of obsessing over Myers-Briggs, enneagram, and other personality tests. Before ChatGPT, it was the best and most validating way to punch a bunch of information about yourself into a system and have it spit out pages worth of self-affirming and illuminating paragraphs reflecting your sense of self back to you in better words than you could have come up with.
It felt like being seen. It felt like a balm, the likes of therapy, to have a system tell you “You’re not weird. You’re this unique subtype of person that experiences the world in a certain way and that’s what makes you feel and act and think the way you do.” Such a special little satisfaction of the mutual, and competing, human needs to be unique from the crowd, but also recognizably and predictably similar to a certain group. “Those of us that are INTJ,” or “us Hufflepuffs,” could understand each other. And could be forgiven for being baffled by the Gryffindors and the ENFPs!
Also, as one does, I looked into my astrological sign. I don’t know if I believe it’s in the stars or just the “hoodoo”ish phenomenon of relatively generic horoscopes read by people TRYING to “see themselves” in the prophetic text (which…could not the same thing be said of most personality typing?). All I know is, literally everything I’ve ever read about Libra resonates deeply and completely in my soul and psyche.
And I had enough other libras in my life that I not only got along with GREAT, but with whom I often bonded about our mutual libra-ness.
And so - whether it truly is foreordained in the stars, or is the subconscious internalization of the things people write about libras, or some other inherent part of who I am that is drawn to and values what is described about libras - the ‘libra worldview and mentality’ has formed an integral part of how I relate to others and who I understand myself to be.
I am a libra.
I see things from both sides. I do not deal in extremes. I see another’s perspective as a reflex. (Almost to a fault.) I do not form rigid and premature opinions. I can deliberate and even debate a topic from all sides. And sometimes am not even sure of my own stance, truly. Because I recognize such nuance and the underlying validity to almost all sides.
Libra is the sign of the scales. The scales of justice. The scales of balance. The scales of equilibrium in the universe. I found this particularly poetic when I was deliberating a future in law.
Also pertaining to scales - Slytherin house is represented by a snake.
Slytherin is also known as the house of cunning and clever people. This factored into the name I came up with for my business concept: “Quick and Clever.” Quick because that is the last name I was born with and grew up with. It’s a name I’ve always loved for its uniqueness and simplicity. Clever because I am intelligent. I hail from the house of the snake, and because both words indicate my witty and resourceful nature.
And there you have it. My handle. My nature. My Hogwarts house. My star sign.
I’d find a way to incorporate my Myers-Briggs (INTP) and my enneagram (5), if I could. Let me know if you have ideas.