Jennifer Carroll is a 21 year old actor and writer. She first began writing for the Uxbridge Cosmos in 2007 when she had the opportunity to share her experiences as a Canadian ambassador for an international conference for women in Dubai. At the beginning of 2008, she moved to Ireland to pursue a career in theatre and film. Far From Home is her monthly account on living and working in Dublin.
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I.D. please.
Identity is a funny thing. Labels seem like safe, efficient, comforting tools in distinguishing which niche we choose to compartmentalize ourselves into. And I'm not talking about relations - wife, mother, sister, aunt - but our identity that we try to etch out for ourselves, an individual little soul carving out their section of the vast universe, alone. Occupation is a handy label. As are hobbies. Religious identity is also highly favoured. But they are more accurately adjectives describing the subject, not an encapsulation of the whole.
It's funny, when people ask me what I do, I tell them I'm an actor. I don't describe my occupation, but identify myself to them as an embodiment of my craft. I don't respond with I do… but with what I am… and it's so terribly inaccurate. Inaccurate in its narrowness. Inaccurate in its lack of diversity or colouration. Yes, I consider myself an active member of the world's theatre community. And yes, it eats up a large part of my psyche, but more and more I find myself itching to grow, and I no longer want to limit myself to those moments in which that particular description feels accurate.
Most recently, I find myself drawn to those things I fear the most, those that make me vulnerable and exposed. How do you identify that? I'm not sure you do. It's not fearlessness, nor arrogance, nor foolishness. Well, maybe it's a little of the last. Perhaps it's a combination of all three. But don't you see? The intricacy of what I'm trying to illustrate sits just there - a person isn't ever really only one thing in one moment.
As I reach for growth, for the vulnerable, I may find myself adding another adjective to my list of identities. I am now a blogger. While most new year resolutions have found themselves forgotten in the eroding mundane power of the day-to-day, I find myself holding desperately to one I made on the short, cold walk home from work one evening. I write every day. I photograph every day. One frame, one video reel. And I write about it. It mostly consists of the littlest parts of my day, small, sunny moments that make me smile or strike me with a thought. But it's writing and it's public, and though I cannot identify myself as a 'writer', it feels nice to put pen to paper… or keystroke to computer, I suppose.
But it makes me continue to muse over the idea of identity. The longer I spend on the blog, the more it reveals about me. I love to bake. I wish I was a photographer, something for which I have neither the gifted talent nor the patience. I love to travel (surprise there). But perhaps it's begun to reveal to me an identity I think we mostly try to ignore. That we, all of us, are human. The more I read and write and photograph, the more I realize how rare humanity has become, and how essential it is to our identity.
So I will continue to write my inconsequential stanzas, and hopefully find between the lines, my humanity.
