How Not to Write a Bio

I have been wanting to update my bio on the About page for a while as evidenced by the note I put at the top over three years ago “This page is quite old at this point and I am in the process of writing a new one.” I mostly had not updated it since 2011 beyond the annual update to my age. I originally had code updating that, but it did not carry over when I switched the CMS in 2015. I think I still look young for my age, but that “baby face” bit is not as interesting (nor as common) once you get into your forties.

(Apparently I have not even updated the age part in a couple years. I am actually 47 as of this writing. You can’t trust anything online these days!)

I thought I had rewritten the bio from scratch in 2011, but it looks like it was a slight reframing of the version I had since mid-2000s. It is interesting re-reading those and mapping my political and spiritual journeys through those times.

I think that is one of the reasons it took me so long to re-write it. I still wanted a bio that gives a fuller picture of me than the typical short social media bio, but isn’t overwhelmingly long. I kept overthinking it and also finding myself saying, “I should blog about that at some point.” An earlier draft of the new bio even included that line because I realized I had not written about when I promoted concerts. I meant it playfully — it is something I say sometimes — but a friend gave good feedback that it seemed kind of flippant, like it’s not actually important to me. I fixed that by actually blogging about it!

I also had trouble trying to summarize where I am at spiritually these days. In this current era of Christian nationalism, the term “Christian” understandably raises warning or red flags for many people. I am still comfortable with the term “Christian” for myself in part because I have discovered more diverse and affirming ways that people actually practice the faith. The other part is I don’t want to abandon the term to the politically-motivated people abusing it! The question was: how do I portray this in a brief bio without devolving into a long blog post itself?

I think I finally got there and have a bio that I think better reflects now-me. Check it out!