10:28.

Take this as just musings on a rainy Thurs morning.

It has struck me for quite a while already and I've no doubt these musings are coloured by a media student's shades but for quite the long while, it seems that more and more folks are simply doing photography, photoshop and design.

I'm not talking professionals, just norm folks, trained in another discipline but exercising the same tools. They take up photography, learn photoshop, design stuff... they don't always produce very good work but sometimes they do.

Not that quality of product is any sort of pre-requisite for interest.

Maybe it's just something an ex-media student notices... why is everyone getting into all of these?

Maybe it's a generational thing. That the "now" age which happens to be my era too is this tech-savvy one who is relishing the control over media that is now personal and intimate.

With our tech stuff and desire to make beauty, we flock to the tools of imaging.

Yes, media is a job in the limelight now... but more than being a job - or maybe it's the same in every job - possessing some media skills seem to have become mainstream. Mainstream could mean simply hobby and interest but hobby and interest could also stem from a desire for identity.

I don't know, I have in my mind this image and past experience of teenagehood - When you latch onto something you can do or like to do or what's "cool" and find your identity in it.

I'm not excluded from the experience but I wonder how much of what adults do come from that same desire most evident in teenhood of craving identity, wanting acceptance (with others with same hobby) and perhaps, the desire to be cool, except we no longer express it as adolescent a manner.

Media kids, is "cool" moving out of the tuft formerly only ours? Is it sweet poetic justice that Mass Comm kids once revered as coolest just because we are Mass Comm kids are some kind of falling from grace as all and sundry move into "our tuft"? As Arts students become journalists, computer engineers become designers and every one else become photographers?

Heh, I'm taking the mickey out of us would-be elite-now-merely-working-cogs-in-machines too.

[It is worthwhile to note with most joy that knowing Christ elevates one above being cogs]

Strange how we - I know I did to an extent - found my identity in what discipline we were in.

Even stranger how some of us still do beyond the non-core natural derivement.

Identity is something on my mind these days. Well, actually, like the potentially indulgent ponder (with no desire to offend, no motivation to upset and no judgement on people) above, it has been so for quite a while.

Back in the days of Campus Crusade and initial Christianhood, when older, more mature folks told me of the importance of memorising scripture 'cause I then build my identity on them and build them into my identity (I'm paraphrasing), I kind of was disinterested. Memorisation was something I saw as rather primary school, and not something I was eager to practise in my freed years.

But thankfully, God got that wisdom into me consciously these past two or three years. The Power of The Word of God cannot be trivalised and honestly, I think identity is one topic that deserves many words, spoken or written or signed, so as it is shared, preached, explained and hopefully accepted to bring life change.

Back when I was a kid, I don't think I was much aware of identity. Were you? I was aware of what the adults said about me though. Mom telling my older brother "see, mei mei can wear her own socks and shoes" made me feel proud and able and with that and other incidents and comments, I build up an idea of who I was. That continued... from being younger sister, to yu lian's best friend, to the kid with the best english in class, to prefect, to chubby puberty yrs (ack) to counciller, LDDS and so on and on.

There IS a natural process where you understand more about your natural talents, inclinations, temperment and such through your interaction with what's outside of you - Your role in family, in society, in school and work, what makes you tick, what you like doing... etc

There is no denying that. And I'm not slamming the process.

I just find it strange to see the swagger in people's steps when they get a good job. Or the tilt in a proud chin at one's ministry. Or the slightly crooked smirk when one thinks one is more intelligent, more cool, simply just better than you.

I reckon though upbringing, growing up years, environment, school, jobs and so on do play a role in defining who you are, we should not be restricted by those definitions.

The search for pegs for your identity is like that not-too-little voice which half plead and half screamed a couple of times since I arrived to my new life in Malaysia: "What's this? You are the girl who became a journalist at 21 with a diploma! Mass Comm student! BA with Distinctions! yada yada yada!"

Or: "Shopppp! You are the quirky, attitude Topshop, little offbeat designers boutiques, babe who can take all those poka dots and stripes and lovely things in Topshop, Miss Selfridge and all that!"

Or: "You are earninggggg in ringgitttttt".

And to that, I have to say: "Whatever. Yeah right. And so What."

Pretty stupid when you type such out, isn't it? Yet basing identity on occupation, looks and money seem to be most common.

See, it's really ridiculous and terribly heart-wrenching to build ourselves on sand instead of rock. Like building houses on sand and losing everything you thought you are when a big wave strikes, it's painful to start with wrong foundations and insist on building on those wrong foundations.

I don't believe there is any way of getting around the above.

We have to build on Christ, the only Solid Rock which will ever stand. What that means is that we learn to find our identity in Him.

Which is not that far off really. When you learn that your eternal Hope is in Him, just as your Strength is in Him and really, your whole life is in Him, doesn't it make sense to just trust Him more 'cause He is unfailing?

Unfailing in His Love and Character. Flawless.

Able to be built upon. Able to hold you up. Able to stand for you and fight for you, to protect you and keep your love for Him and for abundant life warm and on fire.

It. Just. Makes. Sense.

As you base your identity on Jesus, the King who remembers your name, you learn to dwell in Him and so you live in Him to take hold of every promise He has for your life, every good work prepared in advanced for you to do, every hope and future He has planned.

It's biblical.

I want to find my identity in Christ. I want to build my life on the Rock. And it comforts me to tears knowing that God is gentle enough to rebuild the areas of my life without tearing me down or me dying. Though it's wondrous - 'cause I have died in Christ and was born anew spiritually to allow the changes I needed to happen happen.

I'm going back to the basics. 'cause the magnitude of them is so that I need to always dwell in them and I always want to live in them.

Who am I?

Why am I here?

I know. And if I can, any one else can too.