This is me starting to blog - anonymously?
About a decade ago, I came across this guy whom I had known for a while but hadn’t really known. We both went to the same school for a few years, we smiled at each other in the corridors, we talked to each other while volunteering at the school events, but we have never had a proper conversation. When I got an opportunity to get to know him properly, it was way clearer why I hadn’t talked to him before, but also he was quite an interesting person. Of many things that I thought I liked about him and things that I thought I didn't like about him, one thing stood out. I wanted a pseudonym for myself, just like the one he used to use.
Now that I knew I wanted a name for myself, I started looking up what names to choose. Here were the conditions for how I wanted to choose a name.
- The one thing I wanted the most was an actual last name. My actual name does not have a last name, and I have to use my initials. I was told I have no last name, and it is just my dad’s name that I would use as my last name if something or someone prompted me. So I desperately needed one for my pseudo name.
- My name shouldn’t be some cool sounding, earpleasing, vaguely familiar identifier. But I wanted it to be something named based on some cultural aspect or any part of the world. It should have some form of significance to me.
Based on those two conditions, I started looking out for options. After scouring through the internet, I landed on a naming scheme that was apparently used by a tribal community. Every kid born in the community was named after the day of the week they were born on. I couldn’t imagine how confusing things would have gotten for them, but I still wanted that for myself. This again was years ago, and I do not really recall where I came upon this information, but I remember it might have been on Quora. I tried to look for it again, searched on the internet to see if I could find the source of it, validate the information, but I could never find that post ever again.
With a first name chosen, now I had to choose a last name, and that was not an easy task. How do you pick a last name for yourself? After going through long lists of last names people went by, trying to objectively decide which name would be a better option even though this isn’t really an objective decision, I finally decided to adopt the name of the most beloved movie director, probably of all time. Even though it was the name of the village he was from, I always thought the name had much more to it, even though it got all the recognition from this director.
Why would I need this name? I had no clue. I assumed this to be a pen name for myself, something that didn’t have to be kept anonymous from others. A name for myself that I used when I wanted to bring out my artistic side, which I doubted existed at that time. I started by creating alternate social media accounts for myself under that name. Never used any of those accounts. I tried using that as my username on forums, but for some reason I didn’t stick to it and changed my username to something else.
Here are my plans right now. I have been meaning to write for a long time now. Writing about my thoughts, inner monologues, experiences or my attempts at technical writing, fiction, and many more things. What better way to get back to using the name I made up several years ago than using it for my new endeavour? I plan to write as frequently as possible and use IndieWeb Carnival prompts when I need inspiration. This article itself came out of an IndieWeb Club meetup that I was part of recently, and I am so glad I got to meet the amazing folks over there. They seem to be more excited about this new adventure of mine, and it seems like I’ll have great support in this new phase of my life.