Is this the place where I can show off? great that's my favorite activity and I cant sleep tonight.

  I'm the man who only realized last year, that I change all the time. 

Borges, my favorite author, point the cleverness of that Heraclitus quote:“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.”

Borges argue that the picture of an all flowing river in the sentence, help us accept the second part of the argument: We change too.

It isn't so easy. Because we still think it's just a morphological change (we aged). Not a mental one.

I still hate myself for being a dick to a girl who liked me when I was 15. Or still being hurt by my crush who was mean to me when I was 16.

We all have those embarrassing memories. But realizing we are not the same person than 20 year ago, help let go of them.

I have not the exact same set of value from 2 years ago. And I probably changed from last month too.

...

So to be laconic: I'm your ordinary clever boy.

And I'll hate that comment when I reread it next year, or in 5 sec. Because I will be slightly different

#3questions someone should pick up this mantle.

I am a father, a husband, a musician, an entrepreneur, a creator, a writer. The world is my home, though by law and birth, I am a Michigander. Perhaps most notably, I am a hubskier.

EDIT: Get deep: I am a person that is increasingly aware of his fallibility and limited time alive. I’m 42 years old. Things are starting to hurt. I realize that I am looking middle aged and not so young anymore. I want to skateboard but it hurts when I fall in a way it wouldn’t have 10 years ago. I just saw a picture that I took with mk 4 years ago as a promo for Forever Labs and we both look a decade younger.

Time is a cruel master.

I spend the majority of my time talking with people about the decline in our stem cell niche and how this decline in the number and function of our cells accelerates with age and I now feel like living proof of this in a way that I did not even just 4 years ago.

Who am I? I’m a guy getting older that doesn’t want to be gettin older.

Also, spare me the whole “getting older is beautiful,” bullshit. It’s not, it sucks. Try it. Gaining wisdom, gaining ability, gaining confidence and perspective is wonderful. But aging after 30, from a biological standpoint, sucks.

Hello,

My name is Anonymous and I am an alcoholic.

I go by darlinareyousleepy here and I am 24 f.

I live in the Golden State and I live for the Green Rush and I am an adventurer at heart.

Sometimes I miss messages just because my life gets a bit chaotic.

I have been writing since childhood and I make music.

Most of my friends are anonymous now.

I don't like to walk outside my door without someone with me.

I don't like to walk anywhere without at least 20 in my pocket.

Bragging is how I made it a while back when I was offline and now I am relaxing and just coasting until I have enough saved up for my next venture.

Cannabis and its cannabinoids have saved me from strong prescriptions and diving into the bottle again.

I am a strong proponent of guns and of weed.

I am a strong proponent of computers and nuclear.

I am a strong proponent of sex and regulation of it.

I like manufactured reality and the next couple decades will be my goal to help the next generations stay this comfortable.

I don't condone politics. I adhere to a lot of spiritual rules and bylines. I avoid dairy and meat as much as I can.

My past time is spent soaking in this reality.

I don't miss much outside of the gastric scrap yard in my atmosphere, but I do get an urge to do things in unpopulated, unpolluted environments and look at the stars.

I wish I wasn't mentally ill. But I am.

Not only that, I am the first one in my line with it.

It is a bit scary and I hope that I seem sane on here.

But I don't know what sanity is anymore sometimes.

I hope that, one day, humans will be able to figure out how the brain and neural system work.

What would you like to know about me?

Hello, my name is elizabeth and i'm an addict.

I'm addicted to my computer, the internet. I can spend days, just browsing and watching videos and reading useless stuff. I know it's not what makes me happy. I want to be out and hanging out with friends and making projects and working and traveling. I do that, and it makes me happy! And I wonder why I even use my computer. But then I get another day off and I'm back in front of the screen. It's a constant fight.

That's not ALL I am, but it's a part of me I hope to get better at managing.

You know, the more trips around the sun the more I realize I'm a survivor, nothing more, nothing less, and that is enough.

;-)

My name's Mike and I'm evil.

You're probably wondering what I mean by this. Most people that have run into me would never describe me that way. I couldn't possibly be evil. I was good. I was responsible. I was a smart kid. I did the right thing. I was Buddhist, I meditated. I compromised. I was ready to live and let live. My boss loved me. 45 minutes per day at one point. My teachers loved me. Right speech, bodhisattva. I needed to change the world. I needed to make it a better place. I needed to dedicate my whole life to this cause.

But it's not who I am, because like I said, I'm evil. That sounds like something a good person would do. I'm evil. Every time I've tried to suppress it, to lock it down, to avoid it, the evil has risen up. The harder I've tried to fight it, the stronger it has become.

Most people can't see the evil because it lurks in the corners, waiting to attack at a moment's notice. You might feel that you're evil yourself, but who really knows that? I mean, you might talk about it anonymously on the internet but nobody with your real name knows these things.

I've been evil since I was born. In senior kindergarten, they told me I could either have a hammer, or a screwdriver, or a wrench for my Christmas ornament. They were going to put a picture of my face on it. I refused all those options. I demanded a dragon. I was the only one who wasn't one of those three. I was evil.

And even to this day, I struggle with it. I fight with it. I can't accept it. It is, and always has been too much. The future is no longer an abstraction, it's here, yet I still pray for a new future where I won't hit the walls. Where I can be good. Where I can do the right thing. Where I can make everyone proud.

I've tried to stop hanging out with my friends, because they're evil too. I tried to distance myself from them. I tried to only hang out with the good people. But eventually the evil returns and I'm right back where I started.

My name's Mike and I'm an artist.

Thanks to everyone for their participation in this experiment. It's fascinating to read our internal assessment of what/who we are, and why.

---

Me? I'm a glider.

I assess the environment around me, and figure out the lay of the land, where the thermals are, where the wind is, any obstacles, and I find the path I want to fly through this landscape, and navigate that path.

I have flown sailplanes before, with my Uncle, who is a licensed glider pilot. There used to be a grass airfield near my home, where sailplanes got towed up into the air, and could fly all day around an area where a lake meets a mountain. There were large parking lots creating rising thermals, and winds curving around the mountain, and the cool lake air... it was lovely.

And now, in my life, I pilot my life in a similar way... finding the things/people that make me rise up like a thermal, and then coasting out to the edges and surveying the further territory, before finding another thermal to rise on.

This is a rather Laissez-faire way to live life, and some may feel that it lacks passion, but ... I did passion. I dedicated myself hardcore to many things, over the years. And now that I'm 50, those are the landscape I fly over and still visit from time to time.

An anecdote:

I went to a book reading in Seattle last week. A guy who goes by the name Caveat Magister wrote a book about Burningman, and was giving a talk and reading from his book. I went and sat over to the side and listened to what he had to say about his experience (he is on the Burningman staff, and has been involved in the organization for 15 years or so).

I heard young people talk about their experiences going for the first time just within the last few years (after I had stopped going), and older "jaded fucks" talking fondly about the old days.

I didn't talk about my experience, as one of the "originals" of the event's participants, or my camps, or my time as Burningman staff. I was happy to ride the thermals that other people were putting up... remembering similar experiences I have had to theirs... enjoying other people's perspectives of this thing that I - in a very real way - helped create.

I had no intention of talking about myself or my experiences, but someone I connected up with Burningman more than 20 years ago was there, and called me out specifically to Caveat. "Oh he's an original from the Baker Beach days..."

Suddenly my plane was on the ground. I didn't want this to be about me. So I quickly asked Caveat a philosophical question about the event, that allowed him to regain the spotlight in the room, and put the "early Burners" in context with the current Participants of the event.

.... and I was back up in the air again... focus off of me... just gliding along the thermals of the energy in the room, and the stories and ideas people were sharing.

So yeah. That's me. I'm a glider.

Here's a list of adjectives: New graduate, boyfriend, programmer, smart, lazy, jokester, still-figuring-shit-out-ish

I don't think people really understand me, and I don't think I really understand myself. I don't think I've really put the work in towards self-discovery, and "Who am I" is such an expansive fucking question that I don't even know how to begin finding answers to it. I know that everyone I meet sees me a different way, and while I think it's dangerous to define yourself relative to how people perceive you...I mean, everyone does that anyway. So fuck it. I don't know who I am. I'm a different thing to everyone who looks at me, as we all are. As I get older, I care less about what all these people think of me, and I don't know if that's good or bad.

I'm Steve. I'm a husband. I'm a father. I'm an actively participating man of faith. I'm an artist. I'm a technologist. I'm a people person. I struggle with depressive demons. I think about suicide on an almost daily basis. I like to help people. I am generally happy by choice. Life is exhausting.

None of that makes sense... but somehow that's where I live. I also live in Denver. If you need a place to crash - look me up.