Mistaken Identity

by Philip Patston

Sitting down to write this blog post, I tweeted: About to write a blog post about a blog post. Ten years ago, nobody would have known what I was talking about. Now it's like, meh*.  Progress. (Source: @philippatston – so you can follow me)

Five years ago (actually more like two), if I'd said I was going to "tweet", people would have thought I'd gone cuckoo.

That's a bad joke. But it leads me nicely back to the blog post I want to blog about.

Last week I blogged on my own blog:

I have no problem with people who do, but I don’t wanna talk shit to make people laugh anymore... My days as a professional comedian are over. I no longer aspire to be a comedian. If my being a comedian was being in a relationship with one of my roles, then I’m no longer in love. I’m breaking up with and ending a long-term relationship with my comedic self. I used to be a comedian.

Then I sat down and watched three episodes of The Green Wing and enjoyed it more than any passive comedy experience I've had in the last fifteen years.

How liberating giving up an identity can be.

But wait, did I say I say "identity"? Was "comedian" my identity? Of course not. I've already said it was a "role". But how we tend to identify with our roles, don't you think? Artist, painter, dancer, mother, father, Maori, Jew, disabled, gay. We say we are all these things, but aren't they just like characters we don in order to play out certain behavioural, attitudinal and historical expectations?

I played comedian. Now I've stopped.

Anyway, I see it as progress, like a tweet and a blog, a tweeted blog and a blogged tweet. Who knows what the next five years will hold...

Meh.

* Meh is described as “an expression of utter boredom or an indication of how little you care for an idea.” (Source: The Register). I would describe it more as an expression of ambivalence. Whichever definition you subscribe to, you can become a fan of "The Meh Response" on Facebook...