backyard crowing
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if you take a girl to tulsa, she'll come back with a new name
(about sex and the city, written in hobby airport before i left for tulsa)
so for charlotte, running is who she is. she runs everyday.
for me, it is writing.
i am going to write, and i am going to write everyday. writing is me. i've thought about it forever, and it's what i wish to do with my life. i'm not sure if that means i'm going to stay in college, or live with dad or mom, or go back to college, or take fewer hours, or what...but i'm going to be a writer. i may never make any money at it, but that is my passion. i've missed you, blank page.
today i leave for tulsa. i'll come back in 2009, the new year, a new person. tommorow my name is janeane. when i land and they call me joanna, i will correct them.
still, my thoughts perplex me. should i not confuse them? will they go along with it? how do i politely correct them? what if being joanna was better than being janeane? what if no one understands? what if they just think i'm batshit crazy? and what if janeane isn't the right name?
it's been my pseudonym for ages, perhaps i should change it in case anybody starts actively looking me up on here.
i think i might change it to something else...something that means "change" in a different language, something that will touch me. and i'm going to need to like the ring of the name, because if i'm to be called it for the rest of my life, well, i'd better. responding to the new name and correcting people will be huge in my quest to change out of my birth name. and i should expect to face some scrutiny at the beginning. people like my paternal grandmother will seriously wonder why, and vaguely express their criticism.
but i don't think i should be called one thing by family and another by friends and co-workers. if i only change myself in one arena, i may be tempted to fall back into being joanna. it's possible that i could begin to resent either group because they didn't truly understand me.
living in an entirely new city makes creating a new name tremendously easy.
"what's your name?"
"jess."
"nice. mine's anne."
and then there you go, anne knows you as jess, so you are jess. then whoever you meet while hanging out with her also knows you as anne. from there, it just snowballs out of control.
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I think I�ve found a keen new way to make sure everyone calls me whatever my new name is. I�ll just say, �I like the new name better.� And if they want to call me my original name, I�ll just politely tell them off. How hard is that?
I�m still on the search. Maybe I�ll take a flight attendant�s name. Maybe it will be a little girl or an old woman, or the name of the lady who sits next to me, if I�m with a lady on the plane.
Looks like I�ll be boarding in about 15 minutes. I�ll miss this place, it�s lovely.
- friday, dec. 26, 2008
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