Through the process of reading various "About Me" pages, and trying to encapsulate my own self into the sectioned off headings with character limits, and having other self descriptions sent me, I have come to the sad conclusion that there is little that a person can put there that will be an adequate description of anything, though they can be wonderful conversation starters.
One can not effectively define oneself absent some already understood definition. If someone describes him or herself as "inetligent," it probably says more about the person than if he/she had described him/herself as "intelligent," but what exactly? Is the person being ironic? stupid? careless? With the wealth of spell checking out there, including in web browsers, you almost have to go out of your way to misspell common words.
More, to take the above example, intelligence is a difficult thing to self-ascribe. I'm a pretty damn thoughtful and knowledgeable individual, but I do hesitate when it comes to saying anything about my intelligence. We use that word as a measure of one's mental prowess against another, and how can I claim that my own mechanism of thought combined with my particular knowledge is greater than others? Still, in the end I would describe myself as intelligent, but the inner conflict regarding that is invisible. Are other more confident in their statement of their own intelligence and does that make them more or less intelligent, and should I care?
The category that seems most frustrating to me is about passions. To me it seems, passion is what gets us out of bed in the morning, it is the source of drive behind many if not most of our waking actions. While many different things can qualify, being passionate about "life in general" is not really possible.
*this is being posted incomplete a week after the date...future edits possible but unlikely.
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