I am a [____________]

What are you? What is the tag you've given yourself to distinguish yourself from all the other meatbags that lay about, exhaling hot gas and sweating?

I got into a conversation today with a colleague, an intelligent and capable man of a few more years than I, about labeling and talent how people refer to themselves as being something because they do something: one can draw or paint, therefore one is an artist. I can play a little piano; ergo, I am a musician. I took some creative writing classes in college, which forced a certain amount of reflection, and I remeber writing to my instructor that I didn't "consider myself a writer, per se." Rather, I was (and am) a "person who sometimes writes." That is, the ability to write doesn't sufficiently inform my self-identity so that I go around in coffeehouses being writerly and telling other people that I am a writer.

Sometimes it seems that we are moving in to the Age of the Diletente - a time when, because of digital technology, we can all make videos and take fantastic pictures and record CD-quality dance music. WIRED Magazine recently addressed this in an article about "crowdsourcing." I do a lot of photography and image editing as part of my job - I don't think of myself as a photographer. I know a woman who was given a fancy digital camera as a gift; she then got a job shooting a friend's wedding. Is she now a photographer?

I keep a blog - I'm not a blogger. I'm a guy with a blog. It's like the old joke about the Scotsman who lamented, "I built that wall - but they don't call me Angus the stone mason. I built that house - but they don't call me Angus the carpenter. I built that road - but they don't call me Angus thet road builder. But you f*** one goat..."