When my friend and I were very young, we used crawl on our hands and knees, barking, convinced we were dogs. Within the next year, we began to call ourselves “witches” and would cast fake spells. That was followed by an obsession we shared of “Little House on the Prairie,” a phase in which we’d constantly doodle pictures of horses and refer to our respective mothers as Mama. Together, we posed as different types of people, taking on different types of personalities.

As we started to grow older, I became embarrassed by my constant change in personality and I wished I could just find a single identity. I conformed to the ways that others saw me by listening to music that other people thought I would like and participating in activities that other people expected me to participate in. It seemed as if a blueprint was laid out for each type of person and I was supposed to choose one. Instead of creating myself through my true interests, I let the people around me create me.

My friend, on the other hand, did not give up on trying to find things — music, books, movies and clothing — that truly interested her. One week, she was punk. The next week, she’d obsess over country music. She was undefined by the clothes she wore or the movies she watched. There was no way to classify her.

However, every time she’d discover a new interest to add to the mix, others would insist she was posing, scoffing at her cowboy boots or her attempt at skateboarding.

While some people might say that posing as someone new each day is decidedly a bad thing, I now see it as admirable.

I now realize that we aren’t tied down to a single genre or style.

Throughout life, it seems like everyone is trying to “find him or herself”by relating to a certain type of people, when truly, it is more important to create yourself.