Character Study: An exploration in potentials

I just binge-read Ling Ma's Severance , an uncanny, eery book to be reading in the middle of our current pandemic. So many little details that mimic the current reality -- and certainly so much that is far from where we are currently. But the similarities pin-prick the skin, raise goosebumps. And then the devolution of the book's reality leaves me feeling sick to my stomach. And questioning everything. It's day 77 of life in semi-quarantine in this pandemic reality -- some days, it feels like we're living in a wild different world. Others feel so normal, full of meetings and routine, work that needs to be done, laundry that needs to be folded. Sometimes I forget the world is crumbling in so many of its layers. Sometimes I just focus on backyard birds and baking bread. And sometimes I see an empty bus rolling past, or a restaurant shuttered with boards and spray-painted with some stay-strong message, and I feel a knot in my throat, stifle a feeling that the world is sw...

What defines a character study? From what I remember in the sporadic writing classes I took as a child (and helped along by the power of the google), a character study is an opportunity for a writer (and perhaps their audience?) to get to know someone. Their physical appearance and surroundings. A bit about their background. How they talk, how they think, what  they think. What relationships they have with others. How their personality shapes them. What values they hold. What motivates them. What central conflicts they grapple with. How they grow. Is it weird to want to do a character study on yourself? That's where this idea for a blog arose. A place to write little vignettes of life lived or imagined. A place to try on the character(s) I imagine myself to be, the character(s) I have been, the character(s) I hope I might one day become. An imaginative space to work through the past and try on ideas of the future. All with the goal of, perhaps, figuring out where I've c...