Wine comrades - exploring identity

Fortune was smiling as I sat next to someone at the pre-Blogher conference dinner who brought a bottle of wine - so we had something legitimate to talk about aside from blogs.

The most exciting thing I came away with from the conference was a category for myself - I now know that I'm an "identity blogger". It kind of frees me up from feeling an obligation to people who read my blog. It was always my intention when I started the blog - a self-indulgent exploration of my identity in Portugal where I feel too often type-cast and limited by people's imagination of who they think I am - and by my difficulty in exploring or affirming who I am in a second language.

At the same time it gives me a greater insight and empathy for the people in my research who struggle for an identity in an international world in a second language.