identity

Personality Coloration

I have mentioned it before, but there are differences between how I am online, versus how I am offline. I consider my online identity closer to my true self, while the offline identity is more the self I have to be from day-to-day. I’m no psychiatrist, so I have no idea what that means, it’s just something I’ve come to accept over time.

Now, I’ve recently been exposed to another personality test, very similar to ones I’ve taken in the past. This one is based on colors, and offers just as valuable insight into who I am as the other ones that I’ve taken. Like any of the other personality tests, it just helps me understand myself better, and, hopefully, give me insight into understanding others more.

True Colors is the name of the personality assessment. I went through a series of ten questions plus looking at what colors meant, and rated them to what sounded most like me, and what sounded least like me. At first, I did this based on my offline self, as it was a requirement to do there. Later, I decided to retake it based on what I consider to be my online self.

  • Offline Self = Gold/Green, Blue, Orange
  • Online Self = Blue, Green, Gold, Orange

For my offline self, gold and green were almost equal, with gold just slightly higher than my green. My online self, on the other hand, seemed to have a much stronger blue score than green. While the numbers aren’t being shown here, I can say that both green and orange for both offline and online were almost the same. What do these colors mean, though? The following is taken from the True Color web site.

Orange: Energetic, spontaneous, and charming. If you’re an Orange, you tend to be action-oriented and are comfortable taking risks. You probably also tend to be competitive and seek out adventures with opportunities to push the boundaries. Living in the moment and enjoying an adaptable time schedule are important to you.

Gold: Punctual, organized, and precise. “Golds” tend to need structure and organization. If you’re a Gold, then order, rules, respect, and dependability are important to you. Time is a key part of your life if you’re a Gold personality type. You need to be on time and want others to be punctual as well. Following the plan or schedule is best for you.

Green: Analytical, intuitive, and visionary. These are traits of the Green Personality type. “Greens” find innovative thinking and problem solving exciting. If you’re a Green, you tend to be able to see the big picture and able to effectively analyze situations. Thinking outside the box is a real strength. You also have an extreme need to be right.

Blue: Empathetic, compassionate, and cooperative. “Blues” tend to be very social people. If you’re a Blue, you value relationships and harmony. Genuine kindness, sincerity, and compassion are important to you. You enjoy opportunities to work with others and collaborate and any opportunity to develop a connection.

So, I’m not the outgoing, energetic, spontaneous and charming orange. Considering it was almost the lowest possible score, it is the least like me no matter how I look at it. The analytical, intuitive, visionary green is consistent for me as well. It is the punctual, organized and precise gold that is swapped with the empathetic, passionate and cooperative blue. What becomes even more interesting is when I take an average of the numbers, blue, green and gold are almost identical in value.

Ok, what does this all mean? I’m sure you can look at this blog post, as well as others written in the past, and pretty much shout “GREEN!” I do think that the core me is that analytical type, that always wants to know who, what, when, where, why and how. This blog post alone is a clear demonstration of that. This blog post even shows the precision and organization of the gold. The blue and the gold are both part of who I am, as I see aspects of both when I’m online and offline. So, if I had to summarize my true self from all of this, I would probably say that I’m Green, Gold, Blue, Orange, with gold and blue switching depending on the audience and environment. Being honest with myself as well, I would have to say, despite how the score fell for my online persona, I think even that probably still falls stronger to the gold side than the blue.

Silent Again

It was about two weeks of silence. I didn’t really get much accomplished in those two weeks either. Nothing from my list of things I wanted to do, that is. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother. What is the point in anything? I go through the motions of the day, doing what needs to be done, and procrastinating on other things. Even now, as I write this, I’m asking myself why am I doing this. I’ve struggled a little with this before, but ever since the move, it seems to have gotten worse, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.

The move was to a much better job, with a huge pay raise. I like the company I’m working for, and the people I’m working with. It’s always busy, but not usually overly stressful. I’m even planning on working out after I get off work to start getting in better shape. I’ve been trying to do that since starting the job, but something always seems to get in the way.

The move put me closer to my family than I was before. I’m in a rare situation where my family is not dysfunctional, very loving, and very close. Being able to be close enough to spend every holiday, like the upcoming Mother’s Day, with my family is wonderful. My parents even came down a few times to help me get some things done at my house, and then go out to dinner before they went back home.

There is so much more to do here, compared to where I lived before. Since moving down here, I’ve been going different places, eating at new restaurants, just doing different things as I’ve had the time. Usually that was on a Sunday, leaving my Saturdays home. The restaurants could have been at any time of the week. It really is great.

With all that, why am I struggling so much? What is it about myself that I haven’t fully grasped yet? Is there anything that I’m missing? Am I just trying to read too much into things? Why can’t I just enjoy this, and not worry about anything else?

I look back to before. I was working at home. I was off at 3pm, and from 3pm to 4pm, I spent an hour in SL, unless I had an appointment to go to in the afternoon. I’d usually be back in SL between 6pm and 7pm and spend the rest of my evening there. Then weekends I was almost always in SL. Hours upon hours in SL. Probably too much time. Now, I’m hardly in SL anymore. Technically, I could be in between 8 and 8:30, and stay until 10 or so. I do have time on weekends, maybe not as much as before, but still could be there most of the weekend. Yet I’m hardly there now. Is this good or bad?

Why is SL so important to me? Not just SL now, but my entire online identity. I’ve mentioned it before, but it is because that is where I can be fully me. In life, I live as everyone else expects me to live. I had thought about changing that before, but there are just too many risks that I’m just not willing to accept. So, to counter that, I express myself through my virtual self, which I think is more real than my real self. I am Trasee, and Trasee is me.

Does this mean that because I’m not in SL as much, I’m not Trasee? When I’m writing these blogs, writing my stories, playing games on my PS4, who am I? I’m still Trasee. When I’m at work or dealing with other things in life, I’m the other person I have to be. During those times, though, am I really thinking that way? No, I’m just doing what I need to do, regardless of my “identity.” So, what is it that’s really different? What is it that is keeping me in a depressed state more than before?

I don’t have the answers to it. In many ways I’m still trying to learn who I am. I had a couple blog posts here on who I am. Thinking back at them, I wonder how accurate they are. Just like everything else in life, things don’t always line up, and things change as time goes on. Those things I wrote are still true about me, but the reality is much more complex. So much that I have trouble seeing through the fog a lot of times.

For now, I just need to keep pushing forward. I want to push forward. Everything will work out in the end.

Transgender Day of Visibility

March 31 is the Transgender Day of Visibility. Today happens to be the first time I heard of this day. I had always heard about the Transgender Day of Remembrance, and am glad I now know about this day as well. Ever since I started my blog, before I wrote my first post, I had been debating whether or not to write about my own struggles. For me, this day is giving me the courage to speak up.

I don’t know exactly where or how I fall. For me, it is a lot of confusion, a confusion that goes away when I’m online. In my mind and in my heart, I am Trasee, fully female. Unfortunately, my biological gender has never aligned with that. Second Life allows me to be fully myself, without the limitations of my biology. It is one of the reasons Second Life means so much to me, and why I’m online as often as I am. Now that my identity is established in my entire online life, I have more than just SL to make up for what I’m missing in reality.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always disliked how I was born. Many times in my youth, I would pretend I was born differently than I was. I never dressed up, and never had any opportunities to. It was all imagination. I felt different, but I didn’t know what I felt.

In my senior year of high school, and for a couple years beyond, I used to spend time with friends playing Dungeons & Dragons. My favorite character during that time was a female weretiger. I didn’t think much more of it at the time, but I remember it felt much more comfortable to play as opposed to any male character I had ever created.

It was the late 90’s that I started hearing more about transgender. I was in my mid to late 20’s and researching the topic online. I spent a lot of time on it, had a lot of questions, but not really a lot of answers. I read about the struggles, the challenges, the discrimination, the violence, and even about the surgeries involved. Weighing my options at the time, I made the decision not to go any further. While others, it may have been necessary, for me, I couldn’t accept the difficulties that went along with it. It wasn’t an easy decision to make, but it was one that I felt was necessary in my case.

In the early to mid 2000’s, I was involved in play by post role playing on forums. Basically, a form of collaborative story telling. I always considered myself creative, and even in the 90’s and had written many things, even though I never completed them. This was another way to express my writing creativity. As was usual for me, my favorite characters to write were always female. They always seemed to be the most natural for me.

July 2009 I discovered Second Life. In reality, I had first found it in July 2006, but abandoned it after a couple days, not understanding it. The second time was different, though, as I found myself in Faery Crossing, going through a tutorial and being greeted by friendly people. I thought I had to create a male, so that’s what I did, but there were free outfits for females there as well. It was then that I realized that I could be female if I wanted to. So, the very next day, I created a female avatar and entered through Faery Crossing again.

To say it was weird for me is an understatement. I wondered if I was lying to people. Would I just be seen as the stereotypical guy pretending to be a girl? I knew that wasn’t the case, I was a female, but would I be accepted as one? The thought that I was being deceitful led me to tell people right away about my reality. I had been rejected for that several times, which hurt more than I could express. Why would I be hurt by a perfect stranger rejecting me? It shouldn’t have mattered, but it always did. Like anyone else, I just wanted to be accepted for who I was.

In late 2009, I met Arjurna in world. Like others, I told her about my reality, still thinking it was something I had to do. While I don’t remember the exact words anymore, I remember the gist and the emotion behind it. “You don’t have to tell anyone anything. You’re a woman. That’s all you are. Don’t tell anyone any differently.” It was soon after that when Trasee was “born.”

I’ve went through a lot, made a lot of mistakes along the way. I realized, like Arjurna had said, I was a woman, and I wasn’t lying or deceiving anyone by saying that. It is who I am. I learned I didn’t have to make up things about my life just to fit into that idea, that I just needed to be myself. Yes, I still did come out to a couple of my best friends and my Mistress. I’m sure there are a few others who probably suspected it. For the most part, though, I never really talked about it, mainly because I am a woman, why would I say any differently?

Now, I’m coming out completely. Anyone can read this blog and find out the truth. This is very frightening for me to do still, because I’m afraid that I may have people reject me. If they do, they were never friends anyways. Will it hurt, I’m sure it will, but this is a day to be visible, and I want to be proud of who I am.

Earlier in this post I said I don’t know where I fall. That’s because in reality, I still have my choice of not transitioning. I’m not going to go into the details here, as that would be another, very complex, dialog. I’m living as a male, which is something I feel that I need to do, not necessarily something I want to do. I live under the mask, while Second Life and my online identity allow the real me to be presented. It isn’t easy, but it is the choice that I felt I needed to make. If you ask me, I’ll say I’m transgendered or simply gender dysphoric. Although, what I really want to say, and the way I really want to be seen, is as a woman.