WP4: My Missing Identity
How Spongebob and I aren’t all that different…
Never could I relate more to Spongebob than after taking this writing class.
Allow me to elaborate:
Season 3, Missing Identity, takes place in a small diner on an overcast day in Bikini Bottom. Two ordinary-looking fish are minding their own business when they hear a voice off in the corner of the restaurant:
“I lost something I couldn’t live without… My identity”
This voice was our protagonist, Spongebob. He then proceeds to go through a convoluted story all about how he “lost his identity” when in reality (Spoiler alert) he had simply lost his nametag. Where was his nametag you might ask?
It was actually on his butt because he put his pants on backward…
While I’m not an anthropomorphic sea sponge, and I rarely leave the house with my pants on backward, I also feel in many ways, I learned I had a “Missing Identity” going through this class.
Almost every writing assignment asked us to examine who we are as people. We had to focus in on our identities and what got us to where we are today. But frankly, this year, I had never been more unsure what my identity was. That part of me felt completely displaced. In a sense, it had been lost and placed somewhere that I no longer could see it. I was a man who lost his nametag.
I attribute much of this feeling to the pandemic and the timing of when I was going to college:
I barely felt like a student because I was a freshman who had been on his college campus a whopping two times. I barely felt like a son because my family was across the United States, and I was living by myself for the first time in my life. I barely felt like a friend because there was almost nobody around me other than my roommates. So who was I? How would I even begin to write about an identity that had been scrambled up for almost a year?
And so, I defaulted into writing about what felt safe: video games. I had been playing games ever since I can remember, and video games were one of the few things I could still do during the pandemic. I knew I could write about them for days, and I thought people would find it interesting because it was honestly something I enjoyed a lot and games had actually skyrocketed in popularity during quarantine due to their ability to maintain some semblance of social interactions. However, I always felt that I wasn’t really painting an accurate picture of who I was to my peers. I wasn’t challenging myself enough to be honest in my writing. So I’ll do that now:
I haven’t programmed a video game in over a year, so I no longer feel like a game designer. I haven’t even got to take a game design class yet for my major. This fact makes me very sad, but it was also a choice I made for myself since I want to take those classes in person. I still love playing video games, but I’ve barely had time to do them at all because of work. I’m not sure why, but making and playing video games hasn’t been on my list of priorities even though I’m pursuing game design. Writing about all these different games made me feel like an imposter.
To be more specific, when I was doing my past assignments for this class, I felt like I was writing about who I was rather than who I am. But who I am right now was not something I felt comfortable writing about because it wasn’t good. It wasn’t something that would fit the picture I wanted to paint. But it was and still is the truth. I feel unmotivated a lot, and I struggle in classes when I feel like I shouldn’t be. Work that should take me 30 minutes takes me hours nowadays. I miss my friends immensely, and I just want to feel comfortable seeing people again.
All of this made me scared. Scared of the possibility that I’m not a “smart kid” anymore. Scared that my lack of motivation was indicative I wouldn’t be successful in life. And scared that I had let down my family who worked so hard to send me out here. I wondered if I would ever find the name tag that seemed to ground me in the present and justify why I was out here in California in the first place. For my first essays, I was scared to be honest with myself and the people around me.
But over the semester, I learned it was okay to be scared. Everybody had these fears, and I wasn’t alone in my struggles. Most importantly, to conquer these fears, I now know I have to be honest with myself and recognize that they actually exist. I have to be comfortable talking about them with other people. In my previous works, I reflected on my past and what I loved, but for this final essay, I wanted to write about who I am at this moment. I wanted to write about the things I’m not as comfortable talking about. I’m a man who has fear, but one that will overcome them.
The true importance of writing for me this semester wasn’t learning grammar or sentence structure. That was in high school, and I’m grateful for that opportunity. Now, I will take that, along with the confidence and introspection I learned this semester writing, and use it to grow as a person. I’ll use it to communicate things that are meaningful to me and in that process, reflect on why those things are meaningful. Because then, I will begin the process of understanding myself better. I’ll accept my fears, strengths, and perhaps find that my identity was with me the whole time.
Works Cited:
“Missing Identity | Encyclopedia SpongeBobia | Fandom.” Encyclopedia SpongeBobia, 2007, spongebob.fandom.com/wiki/Missing_Identity.
