I am not...

[terriko]

I really enjoyed this post titled Manifesto: I Am Not a Brand.

It makes me sort of want to make a list of all the other things I'm not that I keep getting suggested to me.

#1. I am not an entrepreneur. Yes, I have great ideas. Yes, some of them could make money. No, I'm not interested in sacrificing my life and sanity to push them. Some people really get a kick out of that sort of thing, but the idea of doing that stuff makes me feel vaguely ill. I know, there's all these studies touting the awesomeness of women entrepreneurs, and that's lovely, but I'm Not One Of Them. Thank you very much.

#2. I am not Japanese. No matter how much you want me to be, no matter how small my eyes are and dark my hair is, no matter how much genetically came from that country if you go back far enough, it's just not true. When I tell you I'm Canadian, I mean it, and it's the only ethnicity that really tells you anything useful about me. Accept it and move on.

I'll bet I'll think of more throughout the day, but those are the two that get shoved in my face most often of late.

Comments

[valleyviolet.livejournal.com]

It strikes me that you're about as Japanese as I am Prussian or Welsh... It sucks that people are idiots about distant origin meaning identity. Identity is what you claim for yourself.

love it

[bubbva.blogspot.com]

I love the idea of "what I'm not" - sometimes that's easier to describe that what I am !

My husband is an immigrant to the US and, like many of my other immigrant friends, is amazed at the American obsession with claiming some distant ethnicity. For example, when I used to say I was Irish - then I met my first real friend who was born and raised in Ireland who quickly explained that I was not - I was American. It's easy to get wrapped up in it and I'm glad to see your Canadian pride :)

Valerie

[heliumbreath]

And I'm similarly not Dutch, despite every one of my ancestors for the past N generations having been born there. I was born in Canada, somehow didn't really pick up much more of the culture of my forebears than was par for the course, and it's this country's history I learned in my impressionable years. I suppose I'm a bit more camouflaged among all the other western European-descended folk who are so common here; you stand out.

What I'm not

[dnivie.livejournal.com]

I'm not a pair of "eyeballs", or a consumer, or a target demographic. Text that I produce, is not "content".