When I thought about all the things I wouldn’t miss about going back to the office, I didn’t realize how much I’d crave

And looking down at my tired gray sweats and the hole in my sock, what I’m wearing now says that I need to shed the worn athleisure gear, find an errand to run, throw on some intentional threads, and remind myself that I still got it — office or not.

But this was only one part of my self-projection. Through school, films, books, the people I met in life etc., I also started to elaborate other pictures in my mind and project an image of myself in the future that was the result of these.

And looking down at my tired gray sweats and the hole in my sock, what I’m wearing now says that I need to shed the worn athleisure gear, find an errand to run, throw on some intentional threads, and remind myself that I still got it — office or not.

Right now, I’m writing this as an unemployed 28-year-old from my parents’ house. The job market is dismal, I’m completely burned out from an intense year of grad school, and the election has wreaked havoc among my immediate family. And yet, I’m overall okay. I’m in a definite low point of my depression wave cycle, but I know the low will end someday. It’s been a long journey to equilibrium, and UX turned out to be a valuable resource along the way.

When I see white supremacists, I now come to realise there is no “your people.” We are part of our ancestors, and our ancestors are part of us. And it just so happens that my ancestors were white as well. I’m by no means saying that Mister Street was a racist but his visible Whiteness was not independent from him. This brings me to think about who the establishment decides to see as Black in Black History Month campaigns. In taking on figures like Walter Tull and Mary Seacole without acknowledging they were also Mixed-Race is doing a disservice. The co-opting of figures like them brings me to consider that society needs to discuss what Black is. What is Black?

For me, Black is a fluid identity and it is constantly moving. As someone that likes to talk in precise terms where possible, I am now preferring to identify as Mixed-Race after years of not. And that is a recent choice, since coming into the knowledge of my recent genealogy, scouting in pedigree and family history. However, many like me will prefer ‘Black’, and that is also okay as well. A monoracial history may not seem an issue to some, but it is doing a disservice to a race that also have a history in its own right (beyond slavery).

Born from a Black Bajan father and white English mother, he was a product of a union of not only love but also marriage. Talking about Black History in monoracial terms is problematic, since so many Black histories are not monoracial. The African continent is the most ethnically diverse place on earth and to talk about African history as simply Black history in monoracial definitions of Blackness is wrong — from the métise in eighteenth-century Sénégal to the Mixed-Race children that came out of apartheid South Africa — to WW2 and African-American GIs having children, in particular, in Wales, with local white Welsh women… a story that has a legacy there today.

Let me explain this with an example. When I was a child I used to spend a lot of time with my uncle, who at that time was to be an avid collector of classic cars. I can still remember the thrill I got by riding in those cars next to him, and how fascinated I was by him. In the years, the sensations and reflections elaborated by my mind that followed these particular experiences with my uncle have in part contributed to create an image of what I wanted to be when I grew up; I knew that, among other things that were the result of other experiences, I wanted to become a classic car collector.

Is there any Black Irish history? What about Mixed-Race Irish history? Emma Dabiri has set that ball rolling for me, on a journey that I don’t think will ever be finished.

Pierce Brosnan in James Bond gave me an image of the kind of gentleman I wanted to be in my thirties. My high school teachers helped me uncover my interest for critical thinking, which in turn developed into the image of someone pursuing a degree in philosophy. Paul Thomas Anderson’s and Quentin Tarantino’s movies spurred in me an interest for everything Americana, and combined with a photo exhibition of Garry Winogrand that I saw in NYC, I developed an image of myself driving around small town America, taking photos of people, and possibly having my photos published one day.

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has an existing market and people are actually paying money for similar products/services. And you came up with a unique offering that’s different from what’s available. Then you’ve asked fellow entrepreneurs, received good feedback and applied everything you learned.

Including Multiracial people into a Black history such as Walter Tull, says so much about society and their focus on his seemingly monoracial Blackness. In reading about Tull and discussing him with others, it can often be said his Mixed-Race identity does not come through in those talks.

All these ‘sensations and reflections’ built my self-projection: the picture that I had constructed of myself with regard to who I wanted to become. And during the years that followed, I therefore committed to a number of actions that, ideally, would lead me to become the person that I self-projected in my mind at that time. For example, in order to fulfil the image of the classic car collector, I knew I had to get a good job in order to make enough money to be able to one day buy one of those cars. And in order to get a good job I knew I had to study hard and at a good university. And admission to such university required strong grades. And in turn a lot of studying during my high school years, etc. etc.

Finding out my Mixed-Race ancestry at twenty years old showed me that I am as Black lives matter as I am Big Ben and Delapre Abbey. I am not white but I am not monoracially Black either. Now, I’m starting to think Black is more of a politcal term than a race. If race is constructed, should any of this matter? I do wonder. I am British. I am Northamptonian. I am a writer. I am an educator. I am a student. I am Me. Mister Street leaves me with many questions about a place that has been perpetuated as a very white.

But why do we do this? Why do we chase our self-projection? Because we believe that’s where happiness resides. “Once I will become that image I have in my mind, I will be happy”.