Nox Amicus

Yesterday at 9:17pm the moon was new again – so as I sit to write this, I’m only 24 hours past when I should have posted – compared to the last few months, this is progress.

Last month’s focus was on Perspective. In that post I had said that “Seeing myself for who I am, and growing more comfortable in the concept of my own self, has shifted that Perspective and shows me that had I stopped trying so hard, I might have been able to welcome the gifts I’d been chasing away.”

I’ve spent much of my life putting on masks and being someone else – to the point that it feels like very, very few people truly have a sense of the real me. I entered this world (as I understand the stories) with my mother wanting to name me Sean and my father wanting to name me Patrick – so vivid is this distinction that I honestly can’t recall one time my father called me Sean. Interestingly, I have no memory of my mother ever calling me that either. My dad always used to use Pat or SeanPatrick – I honestly have no idea what my mother called me.

But being born into a naming controversy was just the first step – I was also born an uncle. The younger of my two sisters has used the phrase “Uncle Baby Sean Patrick” – I’m not sure how widespread that might have been, but it’s accurate. I had to play the role of child, but I also had to find ways to relate on a different level with siblings who had children that were around my age. I was compelled to grasp deeper concepts, but still stand at the top of the stairs and sing Moon River as company was leaving.

This concept of Identity was underscored at band rehearsal recently – and again at last week’s gig – when my band family started to rattle off the roles I play in the group. Keyboardist, background vocalist, sometime lead vocalist, guitarist, sound engineer, accountant… I’m happy to do all of them – but those are a lot of hats. I said to my boss in work this week that while I have a title, I’m really a utility infielder – whatever we need, she should feel free to throw me at that role.

I’m grateful that I can function reasonably well in different areas – but from my own Perspective, it can be distracting. Who am I?

So the theme for this cycle is Identity. I want to get a sense of how I feel in all of the roles I play and try to determine what about them brings Me joy. I don’t think I’m going to stop doing any of the things I do, or stop being who I am to the myriad people in my life – but I need to get a handle on what works for me, and not just what serves everyone else’s needs. I said once to someone not long ago that I didn’t want to be the value to a variable in someone else’s equation – I wanted to know my own worth. I think this is the goal of all of these posts in total though – not just confined to one month. Still – it’s good to know the question.

I struggled with a song for this post; with no fewer than half a dozen songs fitting the theme in one way or another. I finally settled on something meaningful but obscure – a little known track from Billy Squier’s “Don’t Say No” album called “Nobody Knows”. This is actually one of the three songs I want played at my funeral (the others being Queen’s “Teo Torriatte” and Supertramp’s “Take The Long Way Home”). “Nobody Knows” won the place in this post though because the couplet at the end of the first bridge really seems to capture the feeling of finding the “real” me – “We all got something that we care about, I propose you find it out…”

As always, thank you all for coming along on this journey of self-discovery!