Over the past few weeks, Several people – many of whom I’ve not seen in months – have asked me if I’m still writing. I haven’t quite known how to answer that question. Yes, I’ve written a little in the past sixth months, although none of it has made it to this blog. In June and July, in the hopes of jumpstarting my writing and finding some inspiration, I took a course through The University of Chicago’s Writer’s Studio entitled “Writing the Personal Essay.” In introducing myself to the class I explained that I “spottily maintain a personal blog.” I felt guilty calling myself a writer and described myself as a lapsed artist uncommitted to my craft.

Over the six weeks of the course, I struggled. When it came time for me to write a piece for workshop, I was uninspired. Grasping at straws, I opened the Microsoft Word folder where I keep copies of all my blog posts saved not by title but by number. At random, I opened a document saved as “Blog Post 56.” It was the piece “Puppy Love” that I wrote just weeks after getting Flannery. I fairly successfully revised it as a personal essay, but the piece never really clicked. I received constructive and positive feedback from my classmates, but I let their thoughtful notes languish in my backpack. While I enjoyed pieces of the essay I couldn’t get the heart of it to ring true because my heart simply wasn’t in it. I wrote a few shorter pieces, one of which I was able to use as a teaching tool in my classroom, but in general nothing struck a chord deep inside me. Nothing demanded, “write me, share me, get me out from under your skin.” Over the summer, I rubbed shoulders with, shared space with, and occasionally ran smack into people, places, and events that a part of me wanted to write about. But I didn’t.

Am I still writing?

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about identity lately – about the way I define myself, the way others define me, the way others define themselves, and the ways we define one another – individually and collectively.

A few weeks ago, during a long Saturday morning run with my running group, I found myself in lock-step with a man I hadn’t met before. He was new to our pace group, so I introduced myself. As it often does, the conversation turned to running and when I told him I was training for my sixth marathon he said, “Oh, so you’re a runner.” I laughed.

It’s taken me years to include “runner,” in the list of labels I allow others to ascribe to me, and it’s still rarely a label I use for myself. Training for my first marathon, I would tell people “It’s my first marathon. I’m not really a runner,” but I trained like a maniac, devoured books on running including the cult classic Once a Runner and its sequel Again to Carthage. Even after two years of coaching cross-country and with several marathons under my belt, I rarely identified myself as a runner. “I don’t even really like running,” I used to say to pretty much everyone. Then a man I was dating texted me on my way back from a running event I was gushing about. “I think you like running,” he said. He was right. But still a little voice whispered, “You’re not even fast. You take too much time off. You’re not a runner.”

A few weeks ago, I gifted my friend Taylor and her soon to arrive baby girl the children’s book Giraffe’s Can’t Dance. She held it up and told the whole room “Kathleen’s a dancer!” I thought to myself “Well, not really.” Just like that, I negated fifteen years of competitive dancing, twenty years of teaching dance, and at least two decades of tearing up every dance floor in my path. But somewhere in my psyche, a voice insisted “you’re not really a dancer anymore.”

Am I still writing?

If someone were to rephrase that question – if they were to ask me “are you a writer?” I would balk. Stutter. “Well, I write sometimes,” I would say. “I sort of keep a blog,” I’d say, “but I haven’t written in months.”

But people don’t ask me that question. They don’t ask me if I’m a runner, a dancer, or a writer. They ask, “Are you running a marathon this year?” “Are you still teaching dance?” “Are you still writing?” They proclaim to others, “Kathleen runs marathons!” or “Kathleen’s a dancer.” or “Kathleen writes a blog!”

I know this isn’t just me. A few weeks ago, I went on a date with a man who told me that he skis. He also mentioned that he played the bassoon. As I poked and prodded, I learned that he grew up training on black diamonds in Park City and that he had been a nationally ranked bassoonist and played in youth orchestras as a boy. “So you’re like, really good at skiing,” I said, “and playing the bassoon.” He reluctantly agreed that, yes, he’s pretty good.

Why is it, at times, so much easier for others to recognize our talents, our inclinations, or strengths? Or perhaps the better question is – why is it so hard for us to own our identities – not those we are born with, but those we cobble together through circumstance or choice? Perhaps it’s humility, but I think to blame it entirely on eating a few slices of humble pie is a pretense.

We like to think we know who we are. What we like, what we dislike, who we love, who we can’t stand, what we can and cannot do. We are not quick to amend our deeply held definitions of who we are – often to our detriment. When we voice our identities to others they become real. They become a part of us, they connect us, they make us strong – but they also make us vulnerable.

At times, certain identities threaten to usurp or negate others. If I’m a leave my career to be a mother, am I still a doctor? If I leave the military for civilian life, am I still a soldier? If I give up my classroom for a desk job, am I still a teacher – and if I’m not a doctor, a soldier, a teacher, then who am I?

Then there are those identities we fear embracing because we don’t want to be called out as frauds. We’re not fast enough, strong enough, devoted enough. We’ve never won an award, never published a word. It can take us months, years, or even decades to own these pieces of ourselves. Some of them we never do.

Children rarely act like the adults they will eventually become. They try on and discard identities as easily as their mother’s high heels or their father’s neckties. They wear them proudly, boldly, and only as long as they want to. They need only their imaginations and the desire to be, even for a moment. If you had asked me who I was when I was a little girl, I may have told you I was a gymnast, an ice-skater, a singer. An artist, an inventor. It didn’t matter that I was tone-deaf and had little artistic talent – I’d tell anyone who asked (and some who didn’t) exactly who I was.

Am I still writing?

Last week when a friend asked me that question I answered, “I’ll write again when I have something to say.” It was an odd response – one I hadn’t thought about before it fell out of my mouth. But I thought about it often in the days that followed. It felt trite. False. It got me thinking about why I write, and I dug through my notes from my writing class for an exercise we completed modeling Joan Didion’s essay “Why I Write.” Here is part of what I wrote:

I write because I can. Because it brings me joy. Because reading what others have written was the first way I made sense of the world and writing is one of the few ways I continue to make sense of it. I write because to write is terrifying and beautiful and necessary.

I write because writing makes me pay attention. Because writing forces me to encounter every moment as one shimmering with unreleased meaning. To not just notice but truly see the man jostling across from me on the train, the elderly woman struggling the catch on her rickety umbrella, the tree bursting toward the sunshine which it seems has just this morning decided to appear. I write because writing makes me feel alive. I write because writing forces me to live.

Am I still writing?

Yes.

Am I a writer?

Yes.

Until next time…