It's funny being an artist.

I never really thought of myself as one. But the more and more I seek to find words that define what I am, the more the word 'artist' pops up in conversations.

Words are limiting. If you say "I'm an artist" to someone at a party, all of their preconceived notions about what an artists happens to be are instantly applied to you. And you are no longer fully 'you' to them, but rather a representation in their heads of the preconceptions that they have about you.

Only when one's persona is slowly revealed for what it truly is can there be an honest understanding of 'what' a person really is. And in real life, a single word cannot communicate the nature of another human being with any great veracity.

Life being what it is though, we all are doomed [in the archaic sense of the word, not the modern] thusly. At a party, or any social occasion where there's a limited amount of time [every one in existence, in other words] to interface with your fellow human beings. So one has to be concise; you cannot rattle on all day about every facet that makes up who you are as a person and expect someone who's there just to relax and has already had several beers to have the patience to listen to your life's story.

And time being what it is [valuable, to all human beings]; one is left with the option of sacrificing true honesty for the sake of brevity. So the words that one describes their nature with must be chosen with care in order to give the greatest possible accuracy in the limited amount of time that there is.

Of late, those phrases tend to have the word 'artist' in them more than 'philosopher' or 'programmer' or 'writer' or 'game designer'. In truth, I am all of these things and more.

Everyone is. We just don't have the time to do ourselves justice.

(though some of us have the recourse of the internet, god of all that is communication)