Who am I?

The honest answer is: I’m not entirely sure.

I can give you the usual facts. I was born in Indonesia. I’m ethnically Chinese, became Canadian, and now live in the United States. I’m a software engineer, a husband, a caregiver, a dog dad, and occasionally an unsupervised hike organizer.

All of those things are true. None of them quite answers the question.

They don’t explain why I can grasp a complicated idea quickly but forget the details five minutes later. Why I care so much about being understood, sometimes more than keeping the peace. Why logic can take me so far at work but can’t tell me what I should care about, and why even decisions rooted in my values still need to make sense to me.

They don’t explain why I sometimes give too much, struggle to recognize what I need, and then feel hurt when other people don’t meet needs I never clearly expressed. Or why I value freedom so much while still finding uncertainty deeply uncomfortable.

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand these contradictions. I’ve also spent a lot of time collecting labels.

Am I an ENTP who cares more deeply than the stereotypes suggest, or an ENFP who wants his values to survive cross-examination?

Why does the relaxed, social version of me feel so different from the blunt, action-oriented person who appears when work becomes urgent? Is one more real than the other, or do different circumstances simply pull different parts of me to the surface?

Why have Helper, Challenger, and Achiever remained my three highest Enneagram scores across eight years? What do my desire to feel loved, my resistance to being controlled, and my tendency to measure myself by what I accomplish have to do with one another? And what might those labels let me avoid admitting?

Am I securely attached, anxiously attached, avoidant, or simply different versions of myself in different relationships?

I like frameworks. They give shape to things that otherwise feel vague and slippery. But I’m also wary of them. A useful label can become a convenient hiding place. It can help me recognize a pattern, then quietly become an excuse for repeating it.

So this blog is an attempt to look at myself from several angles: personality, attachment, childhood, trauma, ADHD, culture, relationships, values, and whatever else turns out to matter.

I don’t expect these different lenses to produce one clean, definitive answer. Some will probably contradict one another. Some things I believe about myself now will turn out to be wrong. If that never happens, I’m probably not looking closely enough.

I also don’t want to write from the position of someone who has figured himself out. I haven’t. I’m writing from the middle of it, while the evidence is still coming in.

Sometimes that may mean recognizing something I’m proud of. Other times, it may mean noticing that a flattering story I tell about myself isn’t the whole story. Understanding where a pattern came from can help me change it, but it doesn’t erase my responsibility for what I do with it now.

So, who am I?

For now, I’m someone trying to look more closely at the stories he tells about himself: which ones are true, which ones are protective, and which ones have outlived their usefulness.

This is where I begin.