Ramblings from a Sunday Morning

I go by three or four names on the internet and otherwise. One is my real name, one is my pen name, one is the name of the character I role played for the better part of three years, and the last is a character that I wrote about back in grade eight. My email addresses are all some variation of these four names.

So, when I went to log into my gmail this morning, I forgot what my name was. I drew a blank - I couldn't remember the name my parents gave me almost eighteen years ago! Then I remembered, and I felt dumb.

But it got me thinking - what is a name? Is it a label, or is it just a title, or what? Am I somehow different since I started calling myself JR instead of Jennie Rae? Or since I adopted Jennie Rae as my pen name?

I went through a period where I wasn't sure if I could logically believe in the soul. Because basically, everything I am is a mask. Everything I am not is a mask. Everything I like to think is unique to me is just something I saw in someone else and wanted others to see in me. It is the combination of these masks that makes me truly unique. But underneath it all, I am, at the very least, a thinking thing. The same thinking thing I was eighteen years ago, and the same thinking thing I was eighteen seconds ago.

So does it matter if I call myself JR or Jennie Rae? Does it project a different mask? I think it does. It may be minimal, but I think that every mask, no matter how small, makes a difference in how we portray ourselves to the world.

DFTBA,
JR

PostScript: It was seven thirty when I started writing this. I don't usually see this time on a Sunday morning. Please excuse any "not-making-sense" bits.