Just who am I?

...you know...that's not all that easy to answer. I'm not sure I ever have managed to answer that one satisfactorily. Not sure I ever will, either.

In fact, I am not even sure I understand the question.

I am...the sum of my experiences?

I am the offspring of my parents?

I am...a right royal pain in the backside for a lot of people, no doubt.

Am I supposed to say my age and what I do for a job?

Does anyone care which current gender norms I fit into?

Am I meant to proclaim any political, religious, or sporting team affiliations?

I've been thinking about that question a lot lately. It's a fairly common "icebreaker" one in job interviews, and more and more I see people telling me that to sell my glass, I need to "tell people your story".

Uhm.

I'm really not so sure about that.

I've found that being blisteringly honest about things is NOT what people want - lesson learnt after one interview years ago, when asked about a four month gap in my CV. My initial reply of "I realised I needed a bit of a break to get myself back on track" was deemed insufficient, but then it was clearly too much when "had a bit of a breakdown after my niece and nephew were murdered by their dad" kinda derailed the entire interview.

And the sad truth is, a lot of who I am is still tied to that horrible time. I used to be fearless - and I mean that. I would take off and try new things, meet people, put myself so far out of any comfort zone I nearly circled all the way back round. After? I played it so safe as to lock myself in a cage and never expect anything more than the bare minimum of anyone or anything.

But one thing that has stayed consistent throughout, is that I loathe bullies. And I find the wilfully ignorant utterly infuriating. I am one of those odd creatures who believes that tolerance is a wonderful thing, but I also end up being a hypocrite in some ways because I *won't* tolerate hateful, deceitful individuals, and I will cheerfully tell those I believe are being intentionally blind to the toxic behaviour of those they admire that they are just as shitty as their hero.

So I guess I'm a bunch of contradictions walking around, trying to find decent people to spend time with, while cheerfully suggesting to shitty people that they go find a nice short pier to take a long walk all the way off of. Will that do?

That's not going to get me through an interview, or sell my glass, is it?