I’m really not fond of writing bios. I mean, I find it hard enough to write about myself as if I was the bee’s knees (whether or not that’s actually true is irrelevant). Trying to convey an idea of who I am and what drives me in just a paragraph or two is rather difficult. We’re all quite multi-layered. Can we really be summarized so easily? Or course not. However, people don’t want a whole life story, right? People don’t need to know about all of my little neuroses in all their crazy splendour. All a bio needs to do is introduce a person, and make the reader think “Hmm, this guy is kind of interesting: I want to know more.” So, even though I may want to dump everything out in an attempt to achieve a lot more clarity, there’s just no need. My actions and activities will probably speak louder than anything I may put on paper. Isn’t there some fear with that though? Someone might read my bio and think, “Yeah…I don’t care to know any more about this person.” At that point it doesn’t matter anymore if you’ve done something ridiculously wonderful. You’ve already been judged. You’ve been sorted and filed.

There’s also the matter of keeping a bio up-to-date. This particular post was kind of spurred on when I was poking around the blog and found that my “About Jason” page was getting old. A while ago I took to actually including a date as to when the page was last updated. It seemed necessary all things considered. However I may describe myself at the time of writing won’t be true even just months later. How quickly should I update? Am I really having a moment of “Oh God, people ought to know that I’ve already accomplished all of that shit”?

In some places, the required bios are almost laughably limited. How the heck do I distill myself into a handful of characters. In Twitter, I’ve got:

Comp eng, e-commerce platform dev, Waterloo grad, flat-footed runner, unintentional foodie, improviser dude, tea drinker, and single guy in the city.

Well, that’s out of date. I’m not in e-commerce anymore, right? In my flavors.me profile I have:

20-something, runner, improviser, baker/cook, programmer.

That guy.

Probably accurate. Still, writing it this way seems like I’m only as good as my activities.

Why am I complicating all of this?

In the end, how the world perceives me doesn’t hold up as being as important as how I perceive myself. I am an awesome person, and words can’t really encapsulate all of that.