who i am, who am i?

First off, sorry about the week delay getting this post up.

This past week was my Facebook birthday; I'm assuming most of you saw this since most of you come from Facebook. I changed my birthday on Facebook from the 15th of March (my actual birthday) to the 10th. the reason why I do this is to see how many people will comment on both birthdays. It's a leftover from my Psychology Major days at Belmont. The thought is that most people won't realize that they are wishing the same person "Happy Birthday" twice in one month. The other thought is to see how many people actually know my birthday, though I suspect I may be doing more harm than good in teaching them this.

After the 10th I started thinking about this phenomena. What does this say about me? Then I started thinking about what my Facebook profile says about me as a person, and if it is accurate. My posts sometimes lean to the depressing, and other times to the cynical. Is this what time person I am?

When I was in High School I had a conversation with my youth pastor about identity. Some friends were angry with me because I was acting differently around them than I did around another friend. And I, as I usually do, took it a little hard. So I asked Joel (youth pastor) if this was wrong, if it was wrong to do this. And he suggested that it wasn't, that we naturally are going to act differently around different people. That there are different "Lukes" and that this is ok. So I accepted that and went on with my life. Since then I have lived my life along those lines. I act however I feel I should in any given situation and don't much worry if it's different for different people.

But this Facebook hi-jink got me thinking. What if there was a person who didn't know me at all? What type of person would they think I was from only my profile on Facebook? From my "follow" list on Twitter. From this blog? In one regard I think that I'd be ok with that. But in another I'm sad that I don't have a larger circle of people who know me better than the majority of my social media circle.

Right now I am in Edison, New Jersey. And part of this trip was to get out of Nashville. But the other part was to get to know the people that I meet along the way, and the friend that I went with. In the post-college life it's so easy to limit myself to expressing myself online. So my goal for this trip, and the days after, are to express myself in a real interpersonal way. To learn to communicate with people, to disagree with them, and to still be friends afterwords.

Well I suppose it's time for this meandering post to be done with. I'm going to get some good sleep tonight, and then hopefully on Wednesday I'll have some time for today's post. And I may just update you on the trip. By that time we'll be in Boston.

Thanks for reading,
Luke
luketlancaster@gmail.com