The Internet Ages With Us

Just last year I was a "googlenope" when serched for by my birth name in quotes.  This means that Google came up with no hits on my first and madian names occuring in order.  That wasn't totally surprising since both names were uncommon and the internet didn't exist when I used that name.  Interestingly, though, my name is now searchable.  I don't use it anymore and am not creating any new records but older school yearbooks and documentation is slowly being stored online so that now I must give up my googlenope status.

Time for a Name

I know I went through a bit of an identity crisis with the name of this blog.  But, now I think it's time that my profile name become something other than "justme" which is the google default name.  As I mentioned in the previous entry, names are not easy for me and I've been pondering this issue for several days.  Many people choose names that represent something about themselves. But, people have many sides and I couldn't think of something that was significant enough to represent me.  I spent many, many years of my life being known as someone's mother and I considered now being Seamus' Mom (that's my dog) and while that's true, I'd like to be more than that.  So in the end I went with the sort of vanilla Ms. N.  The Ms. part was a conscious choice.  I usually choose the Mrs. title since I AM a Mrs.  But these writings seem to represent the Ms. in me.  I don't mean that in a woman's rights kind of way but in an individual person kind of way.  I know it's not the most individual name, but at least it is one that I actively choose instead of one that I ended up with for lack of a decision.

Oddly enough, the only name I remember choosing without a struggle was the name of my imaginary friend when I was a child.  Her name was Mary Lou.  I was the youngest in my family by many years so I grew up in a house of adults and near adults and spent a lot of  alone time.  At some point, as children in this situation often do, I adopted an imaginary friend to keep me company.  My sister was introduced to her one day after school.  She walked in the front door as she always did and the door closed as always, but I reacted with an exclamation of "You shut the door on Mary Lou!!"  My mother had to provide her with an explanation.  I even subjected my family to a birthday party for Mary Lou complete with cake and candles and a place set for her.  I remember my dad asking my mother with concern if I was "all right".  I know he was referring to my mental state.  My mother covered for me saying that it was just a phase.  I think I must have learned to believe the best of a situation from her.  She was right, of course.  Mary Lou no longer lives with me.  I have to admit, though that I DO talk to myself and Seamus when I'm here alone.  That's normal, right?

What's In A Name?

Last night I decided to google "The Dieting Wars".  That was the original name of this blog.  And I DID think it was original to me.  Dieting has always felt like a war, a civil war in fact of me against me.  Imagine my surprise when I discovered that my title has been used over and over and over again long before my meager attempts at blogging!  Perhaps that title was tucked away somewhere in my subconscious.

Choosing names has always been difficult for me.  It took me days to name my children and in fact I was once threatened with a delayed discharge from the hospital unless I would settle on a name.  I owned several "name" books but the decision seemed so huge and permanent to me.  I wanted a name that was not super common but not super unusual.  I didn't want to saddle my children with a name they would hate.  I considered names with a significant meaning, Biblical names and briefly, family names. Of course, I finally made a decision for each of my three children.  Hopefully they're satisfied with the choices.

So, when my chosen name for this blog was taken, I had to search those corners of my brain again and come up with a new one.  Originally I wanted the word "diet" in the title since that was my primary focus for starting the blog and I figured if anyone wanted to search for something on diets, my blog might come up.  The usual ideas (which I was smart enough to google first this time) again had all been taken.  I considered "Standing on One Leg" since life is all a balance but again that left out "diet".  And so I finally combined the two settling on what you see above.  Actually I like it a lot better than my first choice. It's both more positive and descriptive.  Changing the web address to match the blog proved to be a little more challenging.  Apparently I'm not too good at reading those gooffy letters that prove...well, they prove something, but I'm not sure what.  I even tried the handicapped setting.  It took me about 10 tries to finally get it right!