Why all the Biographical Versions?
A valid question. A more appropriate question would, indeed, be why NOT all the biographical versions? People evolve and change. Interests from the past can grow, expand, change, or dissolve. Showing past and current biographies and the era of personal history in which they were written is inspiring to people in the process of change, adaptation, and learning from one’s successes and failures; additionally, the evolutionary emotional changes one undergoes is interesting and valuable.
Evolutionary “Versions”
As a human who likes tech, NLP, minimalism, journaling, and coaching, I go through “versions”! I evolve and optimize and improve my outlook, focuses, I may minimize my belongings, optimize my “cognitive code”, shift a focus, abandon something(s) toxic and progress. My mini self-blurb bios in:
- 2006 (Poetic and Philosophical Version).
- 2007 (Code).
- 2009 (Coaching).
- 2011 (Present).
- 2011 (Present Supplementary).
Are “encapsulations” of which I’ve put a lot of thought and work (especially the 2006 bio) and observing those evolutions and focuses of anyone is interesting and inspiring.
For example, my bio in 2009 was copying the format of this coder turned productivity coach, Steve Pavlina. I mention this for two reasons:
- It’s ironic that I modeled someoene who went from computer coding to coaching and I am interested in going from coaching to computer coding!
- To communicate that copying someone is imprisoning.
I was modeling (and engaging a form of mimicry). I’m not ashamed of that because people unconsciously have habits, lead lives, produce ideas, and maintain qualities from people all the time (this results in the celebrity conglomerate syndrome which I discuss in depth in my first major book, Validate Your Life). Was I deliberately trying to copy Steve Pavlina’s style and organization format? Certainly not, but in hindsight I remember modeling some of his site off of my own. You can even compare the similarities between his site and my own 2009 web site. The two have fairly different content and my site was originally my own, but from a design perspective, the two sites were very similar. As a side note my old 2009 site toxically reflected some catchphrases of the Apple.com site. I am mentioning this not as references to copyrights, nor anything legal. But, rather, because of an emotional reason, namely that copying someone else is imprisoning; You never get to fully explore what you do. Almost always people have to mimic at the beginning, but success occurs optimally via one’s own voice. Conclusively, I mimicked elements of Steve’s site (and bio) and Apple’s site. I now consider those toxically infectious emotional virii that discombobulated my identity (but my identity at that time, was also slightly discombobulated!). I don’t look at how I viewed myself (my 2009 mini bio) as blemished by Steve’s work (not at all), but it certainly impacted and influenced it. I like to think that my current “evolutionary version” is less tainted, and more pristinely myself.
It’s fascinating to see how a person changes and/or evolves. In my previous biographies (technically, previous versions of me!) I do indeed mention a few of the same things I mention here, but do so in very different ways. Those thematic and structural emphases reflect advances, changes, and progressions going on in my life and historical perspectives I’ve utilized. Basically, if you see how someone else viewed and described themselves and then how they changed, observing that can often help in your own transformation(s), or it can just be an interest of personal history. However, my main intention is simply to share personal history and not to assist people in transformation (although this is circumstantial I’ve discovered sharing personal history often can galvanize transformation moreso than many other actions, at times).
All that said, I like my current bio because I wrote it after an intense bit of exercise and consider it undiluted and just me communicating who I am and what I’ve done without using someone else’s frame nor archetype!
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Copyright. 2003-2011. All rights reserved. John Thomas “Kooz” Kuczmarski aka johntkucz aka John Thomas aka John Kooz.
