You will have to fill in your own blank

There is an implicit social expectation that people will have traits and identities which settle seamlessly into specific categories, a tab fit to a slot, a demographic label effortlessly named to keep a census streamlined and tidy. One may have a gender identity, an age, a nationality, a romantic or sexual orientation, a religion. One certainly has a specific height and weight at any given moment; one's vision may be 20/20; one's morality may adhere to absolutes or to assumed relativity.

Social errors surface periodically based on one person's unequal belief about these identities, relative to another person's belief about them: perhaps they place priority on different categories- one identifying first and most strongly as a New Yorker, and expecting the other to identify likewise first as the resident of a city, when in fact the other's strongest label for self-regard is "bisexual woman" or "Mormon" or "pediatrician" or "father." Perhaps one expects the other to hold a strong opinion about some political or other topic, and to base an identity around that, while the latter either holds no political preference, or deliberately abstains from allowing such preferences to be the foundation of their identity. In most cases, there is no significant misunderstanding in how the other person identifies; the respective identities are simply mutually exclusive and mutually hostile, an "Us versus Them" attitude which neither party can freely abide without feeling they each betray their own identity and integrity.

One possible method by which to work around these social errors- or at least to avoid being, oneself, a perpetrator of them upon other persons, even if one remains vulnerable to other people performing them- is to intentionally leave these identity categories blank: anonymity as moral imperative. In avoidance of interfaith hostility, a person may consider himself an agnostic atheist, taking no confrontational position relative to other religions and cautiously abstaining from participating in that identity category altogether. Likewise, a person may feel purely alienated by all common available labels within a given category, and may simply reject that category as not applying to them at all; this is the case for many agender individuals.

Any survey may have or lack a "none of the above" option for questions of identity. In such cases, it is a merciful thing to have a box marked "other," with room to enter one's own self-statement, even if that statement is N/A. The first and simplest way to ensure everybody has a voice is to stop assuming we already know every possible answer to the question, "Who are you?"

Iron Noder 2015, 29/30

Lately, for me, things have been feeling empty.

Not a void, but a blank canvas. Around its margins lies all the portended chaos that I am made aware of but over which I have little control. The void, the canvas, gets brighter when cast against this maelstrom, and its demand to be addressed gets louder each day.

I remember having had this feeling before, but I was, or thought I was, a different person than I am now. All those almost 30 years ago, it felt like I could afford to be that melodramatic or melancholy because it was natural for my age, for my floating sense of not being anchored to anything while always seeking an anchor. Here I am again, only this time, I am peacefully tethered to a world of my own construction, my choices. In my personal life, I am pretty much exactly where I want to be: settled in my career, looking forward to the transition to a new state and state of being, building new regimens to stave off physical and mental degradation. I mean, hell, I just bought a cold press masticating juicer; while I’m not of the camp that seeks to make the purchase of an air fryer their entire culinary identity, I would, ideally, like to live a long time, maybe even longer than my mother did, and maybe avoid some of the trappings of old age that finally pulled her under (only, I’m sure, to make space for other neuroses). Of course and as usual, my timing is off; it’s probably not the best time to want to increase purchases of fruits and vegetables. As usual, I choose to make my reality fit into a time where it is clearly out of place.

Getting older is different from becoming mature is different from evolving. If I am to have acquired a sense of wisdom, I am generally keeping it to myself and sharing it only if it can enable me to connect with someone I value. My circle was always small, but now it’s sparse, single pinpoints across a wide map of open spaces.

In some ways, there are so many more ways to connect with other people now than there were when this all started. And yet, it feels even more challenging to connect. When we used to have to wait for things, those things became talismans for the tribe we were building: postcards, mix tapes and mix CDs, voicemail messages, refrigerator magnets, actual photos wedged into actual books. We still have those style of things now, but they seem to disintegrate while we hold them in our hands. But, back to that canvas.

For the last 20 years, I have had many different jobs, but they were all housed in a middle school or high school. When you’re fortunate enough or clever enough to take advantage of that level of consistency, you become insulated, cocooned in stasis. Even the things that you don’t know and don’t read, like your negotiated contract or union representation, serve to protect you from thinking of the world beyond that safety. That’s a lot of words to say: it’s all I’ve ever known for so long. Still, every time I’ve moved in the past, from high school to college to New Orleans to marriage to divorce to where I am now, each time, I made a conscious choice to address or redress parts of myself if I felt it was necessary. Now, it seems, I am trying to preemptively evolve before the location changes. And that damn blank canvas won’t leave me alone.

Menopause has been a challenge, but not overly problematic. It’s harder to take off those 20 extra pounds with 20 extra years folded in. But I’m trying to pay attention; I know weight bearing exercise is better for keeping bones strong, that’s it’s not about being smaller but being stronger, that this is a time where, instead of figuring myself out, I’m getting comfortable with digging deeper into myself. I’m feeling that need to be anchored, only this time, to myself.

I don’t know if that blank canvas will get filled with experiences, or self expression, or if it will become a repository for my mortality. All I know for now is that it provides comfort and irritation that it’s still there, not even waiting for me, but waiting for anything that will bring it into focus with the periphery.