The non-deliberate art of self-fashioning

You'll have to forgive me a little self-centered indulgence on this one....

I was cleaning out an old purse a week or two ago, making my transition into an autumn full of rich colors, wool, leather, and the like, and I found a list. To be honest, I'm surprised that I even opened it: A little secret of mine? I've never been good at cleaning out the old shopping lists, spare change, and other miscellany prior to putting a purse back in the closet.

As it turns out, I'm glad that I didn't clean it out when I put the purse away (you saw THAT coming, didn't you?). I probably would have crumpled it up and thrown it away. Or, tucked it into a journal and promptly forgotten about it. As it stands, I HAD forgotten about it, and was more than a little curious to read through a scribbled "goals" list for 2010.

I don't think it was a resolutions list, rather, more of a "things it'd be nice to do more of and be better about in the year to come."

What was surprising about this list, was, despite the fact that I hadn't seen it in nearly a year (I'm sure I wrote it sometime in January), I'd somehow managed to accomplish a surprising number of the bullet points I'd set out for myself. Not just the small, "to-do" caliber items, but the bigger, more profound ones, too.

#1: Change last name. Though not every document in my arsenal has my married name on it, the important ones now do. And they were all changed (uh, barely) prior to our first anniversary. Bank account? Check. Driver's license? Check. Passport? Uuuur.....

#2: Improve bread baking skills. I'm getting there. I made this killer dill bread over the weekend, and despite the fact that it was a dreaded yeasted bread, it turned out beautiful. It rose (twice!), it was flavorful, and it baked up with a golden crust. Yum.

#3: Learn to cross country ski. I still have a month and a half. Cut me some slack.

#4: Write more letters. Fail.

#5: Be more diligent about getting out and about going to the YMCA. Check. Done. Better. Baby steps.

#6: Read more books. Done. Big improvement over last year, though not quite where I'd like to be.

#7: Drink more tea. Frivolous, but delicious. And DONE.

#8: Improve my work situation. Passed this test with flying colors.

#9: Join a community activity. I think I can say that accomplishing this has made a significant difference in my life.

So great. A to-do list. Killer for you that you were able to meet your silly little goals.


Except for the fact that I wrote these down on a whim, and then never managed to look at them once since then. I was a little floored by the proportion of these that I was able to accomplish, even though I wasn't actively checking them off. I didn't have the list posted, reminding me of what I was supposed to get done. I didn't have a mantra that I read to myself every morning in the mirror. I wrote down a list, promptly forgot about it, and lost it in the bottom of a purse in my closet.

I wrote my senior thesis in college about self-fashioning in Hamlet (ambitious? me?). One of the points I really latched on to was that once a character shared an idea or a proposition with someone else, that ambition became, somehow, a little more real. By saying it aloud, it transitioned from the realm of pure, ephemeral idea, into something more likely, more accountable.

Is the fact that I did pretty well on this to-do list just luck? Would I have accomplished those points anyhow? They ARE pretty frivolous (I know). I like to think that because I put them out there - wrote them down - made them a little more concrete in both my mind, and the broader "universe" that I somehow made them a little more "real."