List ten traits that, put together, identify you uniquely. Don't use inherent physical traits (brown hair, blue eyes) unless they're really distinctive (six fingers, born without a spleen). Also, try to avoid "things that I like" - these are the top ten traits that, if anybody else had every single one of them, would make them your twin.
- arrogant / confident
- brave
- generous
- trusting (overly?)
- creative
- hard-working
- megalomaniacal
- queer
- South Asian-American immigrant
- geeky
It's funny, putting this list together. I kept wanting to add the opposites too -- if I'm sometimes brave, I'm also often cowardly, or at least chicken. If I'm often hard-working, I do also laze about an awful lot, and I tend to choose the paths that will create the least amount of work for me (which applies both in physical tasks but also in emotional relationship work with friends and lovers, sometimes leading to much trouble). I listed the positive traits in those cases because they do seem to mostly prevail, but it feels misleading to not acknowledge the negative ones as well, given how often they influence me.
I really did have to put both arrogant and confident, because they're essentially the same thing, but have both negative and positive effects. Massive amounts of confidence let me take on all kinds of things I haven't done before, with some sort of internal faith that I can learn to do them as well as anybody else, if not better. That's directly led to a lot of what I've accomplished in the last decade. Arrogance is the nastier side of that coin, a certain superiority complex, the kind of thing that comes out when I get just a little gloaty about having gone to the U of C, for example. Or secretly revel in my GRE scores.
Interesting exercise, anyway. I'm open to suggestions for revising the list. :-)
I asked Karina how she would modify my list. She might add hostessy, thoughtful (which are nice, obviously), but also ruthless, callous, or hard-headed (eep!). Actually, I’d probably agree with her on the latter, though I’d be more likely to phrase it as pragmatic. 🙂 And she suggested driven to encompass hardworking and ambitious, and removing trusting, as being encompassed by impulsive and brave. Other possibilities included efficient, competent, productive, organized. I like her list better than mine, I think.
Revised list:
And did I mention self-involved? 🙂 What kind of person not only makes a list like this, but then spends time thinking about it and revising it?