Walking to Self-Identity

Here's something I haven't done in a while. Got up in the morning and walked. My new job has altered my body clock, hence the ipoded me who emerged from my house early on a Sunday morning and walked all the way to Sydney Harbour. I passed some interesting characters along the way - from toasted European backpackers to an impish man in a dirty bow-tie muttering to himself.

Walking felt good. I let the chaos around me float by, an observer pacing towards the sea (it would be blasphemous to make a Gandhi comparison). Along the way I stopped in a bookstore and roamed the shelves, berating myself for spending too long on My Life by Bill Clinton earlier this year (the man was President of the United States for godsakes, and still 800 pages of generic waffle). I reminded myself of the pleasures of reading Tim Winton's Cloudstreet in the wee small hours on the train to work, and how much I wanted to read more, to challenge the mind to its limits (in a delicious comment on this morning's Insiders, Gerard Henderson remarked that it would be difficult to find those focused on cultivation of the intellect in the Liberal Party, an organisation traditionally bereft of an intellectual base). I remembered the books that were waiting, from authors such as Italo Calvino, Jonathan Franzen, George Elliot, Graham Greene. I remembered how much I loved Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood. As I departed the bookstore I remembered how much walking encouraged a mind body soul mentality, and so I wore a face of contentment as I reached the sea, got on a train and went home.

I used to walk a lot through the city, but in a different incarnation. As recently as earlier in the year I was a fidgity shadow of self-loathing. I've never been comfortable in public places, unable to shake the feeling of being watched (okay, perhaps today I was being spied upon given the new anti-terrorism legislation). If I had continued on that path perhaps in a fit of comedic revelation I would have made the film Zoolander. Ben Stiller's film is filled with paranoia about self image and identity. Male model Derek Zoolander (Stiller) is the epitome of ego crisis, constantly requesting (and providing himself with) self-affirmation. Perhaps I exaggerated my liking of the film, but there are funny moments suitable for drinking games and lazy couch evenings, and Stiller has perfected the art of the random cameo, especially when David Bowie shows up to adjudicate a "walk off" between Stiller and his cooky model nemesis Hansel (Owen Wilson).

A far more successful investigation into notions of identity is the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. As much as pop culture is my thing, there are cultural artifacts of the zeitgeist that I miss. Thus this is my first foray into the adventures of Buffy Summers. I'm not going to write an essay for fear of a swarm of online Buffyites attacking me from all corners using their combination of Jedi and Slayer techniques. But following my experience of the show so far (the first season and five episodes of the second), I'm a fan. From my perspective it's a show about the tribulations of growing up. However, unlike both trashy (Beverly Hills 90210) and serious (My So Called Life) teen fare, Buffy externalises the fears, desires and demons of teenagers through the phenomena that Buffy, Xander, Willow and Giles confront.

What? That's it?

Look, I'm trembling. I can feel the hardcore fans ready to lynch me. I'll write a proper postmodern deconstructionalist post-feminist anarchist existential Keynesian diatribe (using the linguistics of Spike) when I'm finished. Salivating. Over a young Sarah Michelle Gellar.

Self-image and identity is something that I've battled this year during my first extended period of unemployment. After the three month hiatus, I'm convinced that having a job is beneficial to positive self-image. But hold on. I'm not about to hold my hand up in Solidarity with the industrial relations dogma of one John Menzies Howard Churchill. The job is beneficial for my self-image because I actually enjoy it. Not only that, my employers have provided an environment that is conducive to a balance between work and play. The trade off? Pretty crappy money. But it's something worth thinking about. I hated my previous job (as a "Database Specialist", whatever that means) and I was paid way more money. In my current job, even with less pay, I find myself being far more productive than previously. So now there are only questions. Is productivity inherently connected to job satisfaction? But how do we define satisfaction? Is it in the work itself? In being paid overtime over the weekends? Is it having a culture of reward and "humanism" in the workplace?

There is one thing I know for sure. A person cannot simply be viewed as an economic entity. It's easy for the politicians and wealthy employers to view "having a job" as the satisfying reality. But I simply can't buy into the the economic rationalist view of Menzies John Churchill Howard's industrial relations. A person is a person. And a person's self-identity is connected to work and the environment in which one works. And work is connected to productivity. Remove the self-identity component and you just have, well, markets, household goods and, um, zombies.

That's it! Buffy vs The Rodent!

END NOTES:

I'm ropeable. It looks like Fox has finally succumbed to ratings and cancelled Arrested Development. AD is the best American comedy I have seen in a very long time. I feel like storming into Fox on a scooter, riding the elevator (and the scooter) to the CEO's office and shouting at the top of my lungs, "C'MON!"

And speaking of books - Stuart, besides the missing chapter in Lucas masturbation, do you want a book for your birthday?