Image Credit: Compilation/Jennifer Stahn

One of the best parts about starting a blog is writing your “About Me” page.

At first, the exercise seems kind of pointless — the Internet is looked at by a bazillion people each day and the chances you will magically stumble across my little corner of it as someone who doesn’t already know me is slim. You might not know what I’m about to tell you as far as my day-to-day life goes, but you’ve been sitting beside me in Arthurian literature for the entire semester — you know I’m obsessed with Uniball pens and iced Americanos. 

Surprisingly enough, though, after four years of blogging, my About Me page is still my most visited one. It is my most commented on post. According to some readers, it’s what made them stick around to read the rest of my mumbo jumbo in the first place. If I might share a little industry secret, it is even where the editor of this column found the inspiration to name it Joy Ride.

My About Me page has been getting around — and I have entirely forgotten about it.  

It’s not outdated, exactly. I will always love Fleetwood Mac and strawberry milkshakes, but while this amateur manifesto was at one point helping to shape me it seems upon rediscovering it the other day it is no longer ringing true to my active pursuit of who or what I am about. 

I was annoyed, but also too lazy to write another manifesto. A lot of work goes into those things — you have to pick out the things of utmost importance to you that will also tell a larger story to your audience (and yes, joy rides and wearing heels to 7-11 made that cut the first time around). Writing a manifesto is a form of soul-searching. It’s like goal setting, with a side of visualization. It’s a fun process, but it’s emotionally complex if you’re the type of artsy-fartsy person I pretend to be. After all the work I spent the first time around, I didn’t feel like I should have to scrap it and start again just because four years have passed.

People change, I know, but the fundamentals shouldn’t. So I decided to experiment with my about me page and try to bring it back to life.

I gave it a thorough look. I even went for a run in the rain like it said I liked to do, and yeah, it was awesome. I had a bubble bath, wrote a handwritten letter and concurred that based on the fact I’m now married, I do indeed like staying in one love.

My essentials hadn’t changed; they just weren’t exciting me anymore. I have somehow managed, over the past half-decade, to live up to my statement of self.

As someone who is obsessed with self-development and constant reinvention this seems to mean it’s time to design a different wheel — time to write an About Me page that once again feels right, but also like a bit of a stretch.

I really want to like donuts, so maybe I should put those in the place of milkshakes.

I can’t help but be faced with a chicken-egg crisis though. Is being true to myself remaining steadfast in enthusiasm for my love of rain-running and taking off in airplanes, or is it being comfortable evolving past those things to a new truth?

In the age of visual representation and self-broadcasting, is the About Me page even necessary any more? If our About Me pages are more for ourselves than for others perhaps it’s time we stop writing down our manifestos and instead start living them.

If I like hot dogs, travelling, ribbon dancing and sparkling lemonade my Instagram/blog/Twitter/entire existence is going to let people know that.

Our About Me's should speak for themselves — maybe if we have to put them into words we’re doing it wrong.

— Andria is a 20-something blogger from Kamloops

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