Personality as self-fulfilling performance

The best way to achieve the insulational state of numbness is to be swamped by routine activities.  The old-fashioned superficiality of routine blends seamlessly with the new superficiality, the surface quality of ubiquitous representation -- and this hybrid accelerates constantly, as you take on more and more.  Adult busyness is constituted, as we all know, by innumberable things we "have to do."  People we have to be nice to, meetings we have to go to, events we have to attend, and, above all, deadlines we have to meet.  And, of course, by little interventions of chance, glitches in the flow that you have to deal with as you move from one thing you have to do to the next thing you have to do.  The result is a simulation of reality convincing enough to pass for the original, for most of us, most of the time.  It is only when the ultimately real descends upon us in the form of tragic accident, illness, death, or a miraculous recovery, the birth of a child -- only then does that simulation stand revealed for what it is.

Most of us want to be, as the old saying goes, "creatures of habit" -- even though we know that those habits are constructs, we can mostly forget it if the pace is sufficiently demanding and our roles are sufficiently rewarding.

And "roles" now means more than sociology intended, don't forget, more than "mother," "neighbor," "boss," and so on.  The term also refers to character and personality, to Method acting -- even though, when you perform yourself out of habit as a busy adult, you can forget that it's a performance in a way you couldn't when you were an adolescent.

Are you a "no-nonsense kinda guy" who is "good in a crisis" and "doesn't suffer fools gladly" but "doesn't hold a grudge" either?  Or maybe you are "sort of wacky" and people "never know what you'll say next," but you are "always there" for your friends, and you "really listen" and "give good advice" too?  Whatever the particulars, to the extent that you are mediated, your personality becomes an extensive and adaptable tool kit of postures of this kind.  As you immerse yourself in the routines of adulthood, they ramify in all directions, in various combinations, depending on settings and likely consequences -- which you assess automatically at all sorts of levels, from the moment-to-moment flicker of expression on the faces of people you are with, to the long-term likelihood of professional advancement.  You become an elaborate apparatus of evolving shtick that you deploy improvisationally as circumstances warrant.  Because it is all so habitual, and because you are so busy, you can almost forget the underlying reflexivity.

de Zengotita, Thomas.  (2005) "Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It."  Bloomsbury, New York. pp. 186-7.