Branding yourself

This morning was bright and sunny, leaving no evidence of the tremendous amount of snow that had fallen the previous night. After Michiel and I had both awoken, we made our way slowly to the market. We ate a haring a piece, the taste would continually haunt the corners of our mouths the duration of a Saturday, and drank coffee on the Beestenmarkt in the sun. Michiel later shopped for some tobacco for the pipe he had gotten from Alexander for his birthday and we trolled around in the used bookstore for some cheap books. I ended up buying two more books than I will probably read (The Debt to Pleasure and The Vesuvius Club).

I noticed that the common thread that punctuated our walk through this morning was how we often end up consciously and subconsciously branding ourselves to the outside world by gravitating towards the things we like or think we'll like. Michiel told me that he hoped that he would enjoy smoking his pipe because it would fit his image.

When I first met Michiel, he told me that he had branded himself one day a couple years ago as a mousquetaire moderne. Not being one myself, I can only say that in all appearances, being a mousquetaire moderne means living an understated, quiet, yet extravagant lifestyle of enjoying fine wines, literature, and having a greater than basic understanding of antiquated crafts, planting techniques, and history. Today, he reflected that the image of the mousquetaire moderne had fallen away slowly to reveal something new, and now he found himself needing a new name to call himself by (while I am writing this at my breakfast table, staring down at the canal a pigeon just rammed itself into my window. BOOM).

This topic of self branding has been on my mind these past weeks (although not those catch-phrase words until now). Now that I am done with all of my prerequisite classes and looking for the perfect graduation project, I have been busy thinking about how to present myself via resume/portfolio/website/blog to the outside world. How do you create a coherent image out of a mess of interests and past projects? How to display your strengths to an uncaring, bored world? How do you express to others who you are, when you don't know yourself?

Regardless of these questions, the importance of self branding cannot be denied and I will spend many more days thinking about this topic.