What’s in a name?

A lot if the amount of time I spent pondering the name of my new blog is any indication. But then, of course, I am “name-obsessed,” according to my fifteen-year-old daughter. She dubbed me with this moniker last week when I was complaining about the name of some app if I remember correctly. Yes, I suppose she is right… I’ve always loved words and word play so when some ad or app falls short, I’m waiting in the wings with suggestions. Coming up with a great headline or tagline (or blog name) is a challenge I adore, even if I lose sleep over it. So I hope I succeeded in playing nicely with my name and my mission with kellyBmusing.

Including my name was a given since this blog was going to be such a personal endeavor. I want, strike that, I need to write and blogging seems the perfect avenue to my catharsis. I, however, did not know that all those mental analyses and assessments that have been filling my head for as long as I can remember were actually blog posts screaming to get out! Until one day last month when I happened upon my horoscope on the FIOS widget one quiet Saturday afternoon. It ran along the lines of “You may be confused about what direction to take, but be confident, something new and different is waiting and the answer will become clear in a few days.”

Thanks to my grandmother, an amateur astrologist, I am always eager for a future foretold according to Cancer-the-crabby prophecies. Now maybe I’m reading into this a bit, but when I received an email from Mediabistro on Monday morning selling an Intro to Blogging class with a subject line proclaiming: Do What You Love (and offering a 25% discount which didn’t hurt), my jaw dropped and I signed up immediately.

The first assignment was to create a marketing plan for our blog, including prospective titles and post topics. I unleashed my inner mono-blog and then immediately honed in on the naming process. My name is Kelly Brock, and if you’re of a certain age, you’ll be wondering why that sounds vaguely familiar. Ever since I got married 20 years ago, I have been explaining with a grin that there’s no “Le” in my name, and, indeed, I do not have collagen-injected lips nor am I a bombshell woman in red. I’m 5’1″ with a boyish figure, so any similarities between me and Steven Segal’s ex stop there! One of my classmates reminded me of the other Kelly’s famous Pantene commercial back in the 80s, where, through voluptuous, pouty lips she implores: “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.” Upon reading my marketing plan, said classmate adapted the line to my blog suggesting, “Don’t hate me because my life is perfect.”

On the surface, it may seem my life is perfect (isn’t the grass always greener?), and I actually remember thinking in my 20s and 30s that it was pretty great, and how could I possibly be a writer when I hadn’t experienced any pain? Well, the pain came along with the dreaded 40s, when my father-in-law had a heart attack and died among his family on Thanksgiving night. It was like someone up above had decided the jig was up, Kelly… you’re having too much fun and your life is too perfect, best to give you a little reality check. That was the beginning of my slide into this chasm of adulthood, where I continue to try to scramble up the slippery, rock-covered sides. My father followed two and a half years later after nearly a month in the hospital, and my life changed forever.

Hope you’ll join me for my journey through this netherworld between youth and middle age, it’s sure to be a bemusing one.