Summer 2025 Directive, Diarist A02
Identity:
In conventional, politically-inflected terms, my identities are white, male, middle-class, educated, old(er), straight. These categories get a lot of attention in media coverage of politics and society, as people get sorted for purposes of analyzing voting patterns, political opinions, and behavior. None of that is wrong—I’m all of those things and all of those things matter to how I live my life now and how it has unfolded.
On the other hand, there are a lot of things about my life that don’t get fully captured by using those categories, especially on the level of the day to day. I’m a husband, father (of two adult children), homeowner, and college professor. All of those classifications explain more about how I live my daily life, what I spend most of my time doing, thinking about, and worrying about. Everything from what’s for dinner to what’s going on around the house, to what my wife wants, to what my kids are doing, occupy the largest share of my daily life and, I think, do more to explain who I am than those other categories. The same goes for work. I spend a considerable time thinking about work-related things: deadlines, responsibilities, classes I teach, writing projects, etc. That means I spend a good portion of many days thinking about my role at work. When I contemplate the future, it revolves around issues related to these elements of my life: what our kids will be doing, when to retire, how much money my wife and I have, what we need to do to sell the house, and where we want to live.
A few years ago, I would have probably added son to that list of identities. My father died when I was in my twenties, but my mother lived a long, mostly healthy life. She had physical difficulties late on, so for a period of time her life and my relationship to her occupied a large share of my attention and concern. That’s less the case since she passed a few years ago. I’m still a son, but being one is not an active part of my life now. I suppose the salience of these kinds of identities evolves as lives unfold.
Perhaps what I am describing are my internal identities, the things I tell myself about who I am and what I’m about. An observer might use the conventional sociological categories (race, class, gender, etc.) to describe who I am or explain my views and behaviors. They’re not wrong, but I also think they only capture so much of who I am, and in mostly superficial terms. That said, the people who highlight the “privilege” resulting from the demographic categories I occupy have a point, and a focus on those external identities would go a ways toward explaining how I got to be a husband, father, professional and homeowner living a materially comfortable life. (I’ll save my views on the concept of privilege for another time.)
As for Muncie, it’s a postindustrial place, which means a lot of people living here face financial and social challenges. That’s not so much the case for me, since I am an educated professional working at a university, which is the town’s largest employer. My status and resources, which are not the same as my demographic profile but connected to them, insulate me and my family from most of that and allow us to access cultural experiences and activities well beyond Muncie. We’re not held back by living here. If anything, we’re materially better off because it is an inexpensive place to live. (That said, we will probably live someplace a little more culturally attractive when I retire. It’s TBD—we’ll have to balance cost of living with lifestyle factors.)
As an EDLM Contributor:
One of the things EDLM proposed to do was to make people more mindful and attuned to ordinary life. I think that has happened a little, mostly on diary days. I’m not so sure it has carried over to the rest of my days. Maybe a little, in moments. People who know me well would not have described me as mindful before EDLM began, and I doubt they would now. Still, I hope I am a little more mindful as a result of participating in the project.
Writing diaries and directives have made me think about living in Muncie in new ways, which I’ve appreciated. And reading what other people write has definitely made Muncie feel a little more interesting and diverse. That’s a win.