As I lay awake in the pre-dawn hours this morning listening to the rain soak the parched Texas earth, I began to ponder the age-old question: Who am I? These days however that question has become: What is my Brand? Everywhere I go, it seems, people are insisting I must know and project my brand. If one is a business owner, consultant, author, artist, or almost anyone who wants the public to know, like, trust and ultimately recommend or buy from them, then one must have a brand, say these self-appointed arbiters of success. So I have been struggling with this question for some time. But my brand is proving elusive. It won’t come quietly or obediently at my beckoning. It dares me to put a label on it. Actually, it sounds like me. I have many labels for myself: woman, immigrant, author, friend; also loving, sentimental, occasionally zany, courageous, scared, stubborn, accomplished, klutzy, lover of all things humorous, technodolt, undisciplined, crazy about all things Irish…and the list goes on. I, like every living person, am a many-faceted creature. Aspects of myself reveal themselves to others depending on the circumstances, just as each passerby catches their own unique glimpse of a mannequin spinning in a shop window. So how to bundle all of that ever-changing, untidy energy into one neat package and put a pithy label on it? The truth is, that like Eileen O’Neill in The Yellow House, I fear I am too independent to allow myself to be branded at all!!!!
Patricia Falvey www.patriciafalveybooks.com
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