Totality of indentity (a kind of essay)

After last week's entry which seemed to flow better than I anticipated, I sat down thinking a bit about about the follow up.
Some people write research papers, lecture and even publish lengthy books about things like Identity in all it's different forms and I purposely say forms because we're all different and from my point of view you can see it  as a Venn diagram  with it's overlapping elements.
For some people what can lead to an exploration of their own persona  can be a person they have a close nurturing relationship with in childhood or for some even into adulthood although for me it was more that I had that already but without the space to be me.

No doubt if I had the  space I'd been more like her as whenever I draw myself that was it and 'drawing in class' brought some of this stuff back to me recently and the crazy but true happening that upon seeing the  white frilly socks, Mommy bought me a pair and  a lolipop I could suck in her presence no less!
 Part of identity for me certainly includes an interest in ideas, people and what one could call the arts being brought up where we belonged to a book club, went to the theatre and thanks to the record club had from an early age records of favourite ballet and other classical music.
I still have a number of the books in a bookshelf.

That was one and funny enough I could say the minute I saw the cover that I had it when I was younger as the smaller ones were a special offer you got and many were 'gifted' my way.
Another one I bought used when I was around 13 from a Country Fair was this

That rather formal portrait is of the late conductor Herbert von Karajan and this record was from 1954 in a performance I'd never really forgotten being played on my stereo phonograph even though the record was mono and I was able to get a cd with this on it a short while back.

For reasons best known to themselves my folks got me one of these with a load of accessories like a radio and search light although I tended to play more with them as peace keepers rather than depressing Germans vs Allies  WW2 stuff and as far as I recall my female cousin inherited and played with them which was out of the norm back then.
Personally I wanted Barbie instead but there you go!

One of the great things about this life is the extent to which you can rediscover play, feeling free to play more on the notion of what it is you'd rather be doing rather than any gender based restrictions by parents, play groups or schools that for some of us were issues at the time.
For me it helps deal with certain more specific to me issues such as my learning disabilities that can and does make deal with adult responsibilities very frustrating when you struggle with the means because I can focus more around things I can do, enjoying them. And so being disabled too for me is also a big part of my identity (I'm not with one, I has one in my whole being) too having had it from birth.
So this identity thing is pretty important for us personally although I don't feel people should put up rigid barriers between themselves  based purely upon that, focusing more on what we have in common.