I have been writing this blog over a period of about six years. I have changed the layout many times. However, I have used two titles for it. The first, Purple Orange Chocolate, was a silly inside joke between two fifteen year old girls who used to spend way to much time hanging out at their school (that story involves pocket dictionaries and the word 'chowder-head' and I really don't think anyone other than mL and I would have ever found it interesting.) The Aspiring Writer was my second title and was supposed to create a transition between the junior high girl who started this blog as a class project and the high schooler who continued it because she wanted an archive of her life.
It seems fitting that I would change the title of this blog once more now, as I'm beginning to figure out my place in this crazy adult world. I'm stumbling around trying to figure out what I want to be doing and who I want to be doing it. Unlike in high school, the various roles that I play in my life no longer seem to define me. Instead, I feel that I am finally comfortable with being seen as I really am in every situation I am put in to. I no longer have the need or the desire to put on an act for my family, friends, or coworkers. If the people in my life do not like the way that I am they will have to learn to tolerate it because I will not allow others to mold my personality anymore.
It's strange that this new confidence should surface within me while I'm going through the biggest transition of my life up to this point. With my move into my increasingly independent adult life, I have been transitioning into being a new person. Just like this blog, I have given myself a new title as well (or decided to go by a different one, at least.) While I continue to be referred to by my old name at home and with old friends. Catherine, shortened to Cat by my friends and coworkers, is the name that most people will know me by as I meet new people for the rest of my life. My family and oldest friends, though, will always know me as Madison or Madi or Mac or any other variation they have come up with over the years.
What the last year or so has taught me, however, is that my title, my name, does not define me in any way. Whether I am being called by Cat or Madi or Shasta (more inside jokes that have probably been long forgotten by everyone else,) I am still the same person.
So the new title of this blog is The One with Many Names.
And after all,
"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."
