Tag: Megalomania

Best Laid Plans

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I’m not very good at making plans. The fact that I’ve been improvising my life since I graduated high school aside, even planning on the smaller scale is a skill I lack.

Oh, I like to plan some things out, like business and budget stuff, but I have a way of sabotaging myself. For example, this jewelry side business. I got it all in my head how I was going to set up my own store sight and build up my inventory and promote it with Moo cards. I went through with that plan. I bought the webhosting, set up the front page to the site, got the Moo cards.

And then I realized that I’d be better off setting myself up on Etsy because it’d be easier to promote and control my inventory since I was going to be short on cash for materials until I could really get going.

So I’ve spent the past couple of days canceling my webhosting account, getting my shop set up on Etsy, and redoing the Moo cards with white out and a pen to correct the store’s url. Time that could have been better spent, for sure.

I’m really good at this sort of thing. Getting everything laid out, drawing up what I think is a great plan, beginning to execute it, and then realizing that I should be doing it another way.

That’s if I make a plan at all. When it comes to making money or budgeting money, I’m all about a plan. When it comes to spending money, like with a trip, I have no plan.

Oh, I have a loose idea of what I want to do and what I need to do, but when it comes to drawing up those solid diagrams I make with other things, they’re lacking when I come to planning a trip. It’s why I usually try to go with someone else. Not just for the company, but because the person I go with is usually better on the planning. They’re better at booking hotels, planning routes, getting airline tickets, knowning what ot pack, that sort of thing.

I’m going it alone to Wrigley next week. Not such a big deal because it’s nothing more than a day trip. But the game is next Tuesday. I still haven’t bought my ticket. I still haven’t plotted the route I need to take to drive up there (though riding up just last month, I’ve got a pretty good idea how I need to go). I’m just now looking into how much gas money I’ll need. These things will get done, but I bet I’m up late the night before printing out directions and my last stop out of town will be the ATM because I’ll remember that I’ll need money to eat.

Now, if someone were going with me, I’d be totally prepared to go days in advance. The tickets would have been purchased weeks ago (and I would have been the one to do it, too), the directions would have been obtained (my co-pilot probably would have done it), and the cash would be sitting in my Boob Job Fund jar waiting for me.

It’s amazing how my trip planning skills get better when I’m flying as part of a flock instead of solo.

They say make plans and God laughs. Apparently, I was born with the same philosophy.

The Worth of a Dollar

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I’m not going to lie, money is important to me. The making of it, the having of it, the spending of it. I’m not too interested in other’s people money. I’m too busy thinking about my own. Or the lack thereof.

Money plays a big factor in my self-esteem. I’m worth not just what’s in the bank, but what I’m bringing in and how I’m paying the bills. My ego lives and dies by my checkbook.

It’s a pretty messed up measure of worth, I know. Never mind how the stock market keeps gyrating or the fluxuating price of gold; what’s it say on my pay stub?

Now one would think that since I pin so much of my worth on my money that I’d have gone through college and got myself a good paying job and ergo I would be in the position to think my shit don’t stink. Have we discussed that I like to do everything the hard way? Yeah, that was clearly not the case.

In terms of my self-esteem, it’s lunacy that I’m quitting a regular paycheck to go back to scratching out what I can. On the one hand, the struggle will make me happier because I’ll be doing what I want to do.  On the other hand, my self-esteem is looking to take a severe hit because the money is not going to be steady and I’ll be struggling to make ends meet once again.

Because of my money issues, I’m very good with my money. I’m good at going without. I’m good at saving. I’m good at paying the bills first. I’m good at making sure the obligations are taken care of before I do something fun, and even then I usually defer to responsibility and save my money instead of spend it. My dad likes to joke about how tight I am. I don’t know why he thinks it’s so funny. He’s the one that made me that way.

My dad grew up poor. Real poor. Poorer than I grew up, for sure. My dad harbors a bitterness that my mother (who did not grow up poor) gave us things when we were kids. Never mind that a lot of our toys and clothes were second-hand, it was just the fact that we had them. That my mom spent money to give them to us. Now, my mom did run us up in quite a bit of debt with her shopping, but still, my sister and I were far from spoiled in the material sense. Money is a big deal with my dad. He never has enough and he doesn’t want to spend it. Ask him. He’s always broke.

When I moved in with him during my sophomore year, I didn’t ask him for anything. I wouldn’t even ask him for lunch money. I lived off of what I had in my savings account from babysitting and working in my mom’s daycare. It wasn’t until I’d lived with him for a while that it occured to him that he didn’t know where I was getting my lunch money. Then he started giving it to me.

My sister had to have her appendix out when we were in high school. All I can remember from that is my dad bitching about the doctor’s bill. So when I fractured my ankle before senior year, I refused to go to the hospital. I didn’t want to listen to Dad bitch about how much I cost him (yes, we had insurance, but there’s that whole deductable thing and then what insurance won’t cover, and all that jazz). Over a decade later, I’m paying for not having my ankle properly set.

There’s no worse feeling than asking my dad for money. The disgust is palpable. So I do everything in my power to have my own. To make my own.

I’m hard enough on myself. I don’t need him to add to it.

The true test of this next venture is to make enough money to pay my bills. I pay my bills, the self-esteem stays happy and my dad continues to see me as legitimate person dwelling in his house. It’s a win-win.

Sure. No pressure.

Times, They Are A-Changin’

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

The reason why Monday Megalomania is posting so late (if you notice, it usually posts early in the morning) is because I had to put my notice in at my day job first.

Yeah, you read that right. I’m quitting my day job.

There are a lot of contributing factors, the biggest two being I’ve got another opportunity that I think will work out better for me and I’m not cut out for cube life.

The new opportunity is coming from my friend DaLette. I admit that I’ve been looking for an out from the day job for a few months. The steady money is nice, but I resented how little time and energy it left me to write. I initially thought to find a new day job, something part time, possibly in retail. But pickens have not improved since the last time I was looking for a day job. I was feeling stuck and pretty miserable.

However, DaLette was looking into starting her own business and after some research decided she’d keep doing things the way she’d been doing as a freelance landscaper/decorator, wedding officiator, and self-published author. One hell of a mixed bag, right? But it works for her and that’s what she told me. If I wanted to get out, I needed to make my own day job and freelance my strengths.

It took a few weeks for me to understand exactly what she was getting at. My gig is writing and I haven’t been too successful at making money at it. I couldn’t really think of anything else I had a shot at doing that would pay my bills and my bills need to be paid. Remember I made a mess of my finances pursuing this writing dream without a regular income and I’ve yet to really recover.

But the seed was planted in my head and I started looking in my life for things I could do to freelance, so to speak. It took a little time, but it finally hit me. One thing I’ve always loved to do and always been pretty good at doing is making jewelry. Bracelets have always been my specialty, but I’ve done necklaces, too. It occured to me that between friends, relatives, and the Internet, I could make a little money doing it.

With this thought in my head, I decided why should I wait to have someone publish my short stories? Why can’t I just publish my own? If I’m going to be selling my goods, I should sell the goods I really want to be selling, right? Right (I’ll be doing a post about self-publishing on Wednesday).

Now, I’m a very money-minded person (that’s a post for another Monday, too). I have to crunch numbers in order to look at the financial reality of what I’m getting into and I admit, I wasn’t thrilled with what I looked at initially. But after some thought, I figured at the very least it would get me some extra cash.

I started moving forward with these new projects, plotting how to use word of mouth and the Internet to my advantage. I like having a plan. It gives me goals. It gives me something to work toward. It makes me feel like I have some control.

And then DaLette stopped by.

Her freelancing has been going well. So well, in fact, that she needs some help. I offered to be that help before. I can be that help now. I’m going to be that help.

I figure that between my ventures and the work DaLette can offer me, I can keep my head above water in terms of paying the bills and have time to get back to seriously working on writing. It’s going to be tough and it’s going to be work, but it’s going to be work at something I WANT to do and I LIKE to do.

Yeah, that brings me to the second factor. I didn’t really like my job. Maybe about a month into the gig I realized that I didn’t like it, but couldn’t figure out why. There was no reason that I could put my finger on other than I’d rather have been writing. However, I felt that even though I didn’t like it, I could tough it out for a while for the sake of the paycheck. I didn’t like it, but it wasn’t a bad job.

In the past few months, that’s changed. The job has changed. I’m not happy with the change and I’m not happy with some other things that I won’t get into out of respect for the people that still work there. I’ve got some hang-ups with the way some things are done and some things are handled and there’s no reason for me to hang around in that environment and make things worse.

So, I’m getting out. After Labor Day, I will be free.

And back to working 7 days a week for whatever scratch I can make.

Happy Birthday, Boobies!

~ Kiki Writes ~ 4 Comments

Okay, today is not the day; it was the 13th (and I had to look it up because I couldn’t remember it, though I knew it was in August). And it’s not really a birthday, but an anniversary. But still, it’s cause for me to celebrate.

Nine years ago on August 13th, I had breast reduction surgery.

Why is this such a big deal? Allow me to illustrate. With words, of course.

Just like other areas of my life, I was a late bloomer when it came to getting boobs. It really didn’t start to happen much until I was in 8th grade. And once it started happening, it didn’t stop. By the time I was a senior in high school, a 44DDD, the largest bra I could find in the stores, was too small.

I begged my dad for a breast reduction because I was on his insurance at the time and it would cover the surgery. My dad said no. He told me to lose weight. I did. I lost 20 pounds. None of it came off of my chest. But when I gained it back, that’s where it went. He still refused. He didn’t understand how miserable it was.

It wasn’t until after high school that he finally got it. He came home one hot summer day, complaining about how hot his bullet proof vest made him and how it was getting worse every year. I looked at my dad and quite unsympathetically said, “At least you get to take yours off. I’ve got mine 24/7/365.”

I guess it’s hard for people to understand the concept of heat rash all year round. It’s hard for them to understand how uncomfortable a too-small, ill-fitting bra is. It’s hard for them to understand the WEIGHT.

People are used to seeing those fake boobs that stand up on their own and seem weightless. I don’t know if they are lighter, but I know real boobs aren’t. It’s fat and mammory glands and tissue. It’s heavy. Only in a weightless environment would my breasts be perky. Rocking what should have been an H or I cup (yes, they make those), I was that exaggerated droopy breast joke you see on those comical birthday cards in Spencer’s. When I took my bra off, I could sit down and my breasts would touch the tops of my thighs. That’s how big and how heavy they were.

Sexy, huh?

I had back trouble and spent most of my time hurting. I mentioned the heat rash. I also had trouble sleeping. It was hard to find a position that was comfortable because of all of that squishy weight on my chest, sliding around and getting in the way and smooshing me if I wasn’t smooshing them.

And then there was the toll it took on my self-esteem.

When I finally got the job that provided me with the insurance that would cover a breast reduction, I jumped at the chance. During the initial pre-surgery examination, the doctor said he would probably take off 15 pounds of tissue.

I’m going to repeat that. My breasts were large enough that the doctor felt taking off 15 pounds of tissue would still leave me with ample enough bosom for my build. That’s how big I was.

In the end, the doctor only took off 7 pounds of tissue total, but still for fun, get a couple of three pound weights and picture carrying that plus (because the doc did leave me some titties) on your chest. That was me.

I’m now at a much more comfortable size, rocking at a 38DD. Sure, it still sounds big, but the difference is a) the bra fits and b) this size works with my build so it’s not too big. And compared to what I was nine years ago, this is positively tiny.

I feel better. I don’t have nearly the back problems I used to have. The heat rash is gone. I’ve got one less problem sleeping. Have there been some drawbacks? Sure and I’ll discuss those at some point. But this is a celebration, so I’m sticking with the positive today.

Happy birthday, boobies. You deserve it.

Hairy Issues

~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

When it comes to vanity, I have it. I’m not going to lie. I can be vain about my appearance, but I admit to being vain in a very odd way.

For example, my hair. I’m quite vain about my hair and yet I have no issues with changing styles drastically. For example, several years ago, during my third go round at college, I was ready for a big change. I’d had my hair long for years, it was driving nuts, and I’d been trying to figure out what to do with it. It just so happened that at that time a group on campus was offering haircuts for charity. 10 bucks got you whatever cut you wanted and the money went to a cause.

I took that opportunity. When it was my turn, the stylist asked me if I wanted a trim and I told her no. I told her to do whatever she wanted. After a second’s hesitation, she did. She lopped off several inches and I ended up with a cute style that was about shoulder-length.

I kept up variations of that style for several years, but recently, I decided I wanted to go for something different, something a little shorter, a little edgier. The problem with a new style for me is always how the rogue wave in my hair is going to react to it. Usually it takes me a couple of days, but I can figure out how to rock it.

Unfortunately, the rogue wave doesn’t like the new style I got and I’m having trouble working it to the point that I can at least live with it. My first gut-reaction, possibly triggered by other stressors in my life, was to cut off all of my hair and go straight pixie with it. Just say screw it and go so short the rogue wave couldn’t have anything to wave.

While this sounds like a fanstastic, easy solution, expecially since I could probably pull off a pixie cut and it would definitely be lower maintenance than what I’m doing now just to get my hair from hideous to ugly, and despite how cavalier and daring I can be when it comes to my hair, I doubt I have the guts to do it.

Why?

Because keeping some length on my hair makes me feel a little more girly.

Seem silly? It totally is, but follow me down on it anyone.

I’m not very girly. I have a very tough demeanor. I’m soft in fat rolls only. Not counting boobs and hips, there’s nothing very outwardly feminine about me. To me, having a pixie cut would just harden me up even more. I could pull it off, but it would make me even less approachable than I already am and I’m already pretty unapproachable (I know, you’d think a short, fat girl wouldn’t be intimidating, but I’ve been told over and over that there’s something about the way I carry myself that makes me seem just scary).

That’s not to say that I don’t think a pixie cut is a feminine hair style. Lots of women pull it off with their womanhood intact. I’m just saying that I am not one of those women. It would make me look like the ultimate ball buster and while I don’t mind my hardcore edge, I need something to soften it. I don’t have to be hardcore all the time and I shouldn’t look like I am.

So as much as I’d like to cut off all my hair and start all over, I won’t.

Thank goodness for my love of hats.

Keeping It Loose

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I, like most people, have an aversion to being trapped. I like to have options. I like to have choices. I like to have the freedom to make those choices.

It’s part of the reason why I didn’t move out as soon as I turned 18. If I’d have done that, then I’d be stuck in whatever job I had just so I could pay the bills. And considering the crap jobs I’ve had in my course of employment, it’s not like I’d be making enough to make ends meet and then have something to put aside for savings in the event that I needed to make a hasty exit from an unhappy job situation.

It’s why I’ve yet to buy a new car. Payments are like a ball and chain, both to the car and to the job providing the money for the payments. And it’s not like I change cars often. My current car I’ve had for ten years. But that payment obligation makes me uneasy.

Even blogging is a trap that I eye carefully. It took me awhile to commit to a blog and a theme and the schedule and the whole nine. And even when I finally decided to go through with it, I had to make sure I have myself enough room to change my mind and go in a different direction if I want to.

That’s the trick for me, I suppose. As much as I want safety and security, I’ve also got to have an escape route. I have to have room to jettison if I feel the need. I have to have the opportunity to be able to do at least some things on my own terms.

I’ve been struggling with that for the past couple of years. It feels like I’ve worked myself into trap after trap after trap. Every escape plan just leads to more trouble. There’s nothing more frustrating to me than to be working so hard to get out of a jam only to seem like I’m getting deeper in it. Like a fly thrashing in a spiderweb or a hapless adventurer flailing in quicksand, whatever I do I’m just making it worse.

I’m at my best when I’m keeping it loose and unfortunately, I’m  not in the position to be loose. Due to my choices I’m exactly where I don’t want to be. I’m trapped.

Now is the time for me to stop flailing. Now is the time for me to stop struggling. I need to be still. I need to assess my situation. I need to come up with a new escape plan. And then another one. And then another. I need to make a few options.

Now more than ever I need to find a way to get loose.

And then I need to stay that way.

Bad Words: Uncaring, Unsympathetic

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

We’re not getting into the words that make people squirm. The harsher words; the ones that people want to gloss over and ignore. But remember what I said when I started this: people who love and care about me have called me these words.

I’ve gotten a tought rap with these two words, uncaring and unsympathetic. I’m a tough girl. I keep the touchy-feely emotions to myself. Emotions are messy and complicate problems and bung up solutions. I prefer to stay logical and either vent the emotions before or after I figure out what needs to be done. Sometimes the venting comes while I’m doing it, but it’s all very efficient.

I’m very efficient. Friends and family agree; they come to me for help because of my objectivity.

But! The other bad words have a tendency to taint the good words. Being logical and efficient and tough is fine unless you’re also selfish and unthinking and unaware. Then it’s not so great. It’s not viewed quite as kindly.

I admit to being uncaring and unsympathetic at times. Probably more often than I should be, more often than is socially acceptible.

Uncaring goes back to being selfish. If it’s not about me, I don’t care.

I don’t have a lot of sympathy for people who choose to be victims who whine about their situations without a move to fix them, who create their own messes and sit in teh middle of them and cry. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for people who refuse to take responsibility for their own actions. There are a lot of people around like that. I’m kind of outnumbered in that respect.

I actually used to be quite sympathetic. When I was kid, I was sympathetic to the point of sensitive and sensitive to the point of tears. That sort of thing isn’t tolerated well in my family. We don’t do sensitive because sensitive is seen as weak and weak is bad. Weak doesn’t get you through life, it doesn’t get you through the sometimes cutting exchanges with my family, and it doesn’t get you any special treatment.

So, over time, I acquired a thicker skin and maybe it’s a little too thick in places. I might have gone a little too far to the other side. Got a little too tough.

I’ve been working on it. Trying to be a little more sympathetic to those that really deserve it. It’s not easy, but I’m making a few small strides in the right direction.

At least I think it’s the right direction. I won’t know until I get there, I suppose.

Fat Girl Belly Dancing

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Several years ago, let’s guess 2004, I decided that I needed to get healthy. Not just lose weight, although that was part of the goal, but to change my eating habits, excercise more, and strengthen my body. I chose to do this slowly, hoping that the new changes would stick. More than once I had tried to start exercising and never had the follow through because, well, I hated it.

So this time, instead of once again hiking my fat ass up on the treadmill and walking mile after boring mile (I really don’t like walking unless I’m getting somewhere), I looked for an alternative. I decided to try yoga. It was easy enough that I could stick with it, but difficult enough that it challenged my muscles. At the time it fit into my schedule well as I was going to college (that was my third stint). I popped in the DVD and did twenty minutes before school. As time went on, I started learning new poses and incorporating them into my own, made-up routines.

I was actually impressed with the difference. Maybe I didn’t lose a ton of weight in the first few months that I did it, but I noticed that I was getting stronger and that I was feeling better. It was enough to encourage me to stick to it. It became the core of my exercise program.

After a good solid year of yoga, I added weights to the regime. And then after some time doing that, I looked to add some cardio to my workout routine.

I started with dancing at first. I just put on some music and bust some moves like I did back in the day when I was hitting the under 21 club on a regular basis (the whole motivation for me to get into shape was that I felt I wasn’t keeping up on the dance floor as well as I used to). It was fine for awhile, but I got bored with it pretty quickly, oddly enough.

Then I happened to catch a belly dancing workout program on FitTV, back when it was FitTv, before Oprah took things over and messed it all up. It looked challenging enough to give me a workout, but fun enough that I’d stick to it. And I felt that it would work with the yoga and the weights I was already doing it.

When I started belly dancing, I was terrible. No doubt about it. I was required to use muscles that I didn’t know I had. But slowly, I started to get more of the moves down. It got to a point where I had memorized every routine of every episode (they only aired one season on a loop) and I was keeping up with them pretty well.

My routine paid off and I lost weight because of it. More importantly I felt better.

But belly dancing had an unintended effect on me. It brought out a latent femininity and sexuality that I didn’t realize I’d had.

I grew up as a tomboy. Yeah, I wore dresses up until the third grade, but they did little to deter me from playing hard with the boys. My mother always said that she didn’t raise girls. I’ve never been very good at being girly. And because I do tend to hang out with boys more than girls and because it’s kind of a rule that if you want to be respected by the boys, you have to be like the boys, that’s how I rolled.

So imagine my surprise when I started doing this very feminine dance and actually enjoying the sexy, girly qualities it brought out in me. I gained even more confidence and felt beautiful despite the fact that the world condemned me (and still does) because I’d never be a size 0. I didn’t think that I could ever somehow incorporate my tomboy self that always have been into the strong, sexy self that I always wanted to be and come out a full person. It’s funny that an exercise routine could do that to me.

So here I am now, having gained back all of the weight I worked so hard to lose and I’m trying to find a way to lose it again. So I’m going back to the beginning: yoga, weights, belly dance. It worked before, it can work again.

More importantly, I need to get back to the state of mind I was in when I was doing this routine the first time.

I need to get back to being a fat girl belly dancing.

The Reading of the Lips

~ Kiki Writes ~ 2 Comments

Papa was hard of hearing. He had a good ear and a bad ear, and over the course of the years, the good ear got worse. We learned at a very young age to make sure we had Papa’s attention before we spoke and to speak loudly and slowly. Papa could hear some, but he also read lips to help fill in the blanks.

I grew up understanding the concept of reading lips, but as someone who could hear, didn’t really think much about it beyond knowing it helped Papa undstand us.

Then my mom turned me on to baseball and the Cubs.

The manager when I was a kid was Don Zimmer and he was a fiery, round man who liked to argue with the umpires. I remember him getting thrown out of several games. There’s nothing like a kid’s curiousity and I was dying to know what Don Zimmer said to get thrown out of the games. Since I couldn’t hear, I decided to do what Papa did and learn to read lips.

I taught myself by watching movies that I had memorized. I knew all the words, so I’d watch them without the sound on and watch how the actors spoke. From there it was just a matter of translating what I saw there to other people. It took some practice, but I got the hang of it.

The new skill served me well. I finally could figure out what Don Zimmer was saying when he argued with the umpires.

Turned out it was a long string of curse words, but the magic word seemed to be “mother fucker”. If you’re worried about my young girl’s mind being warped by being exposed to that word, please don’t. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard it…er…read it.

Since then I’ve applied it to more than just baseball. I’ve developed my own troubles hearing in certain situations and lip reading has bailed me out of some awkward situations.

I’ve also developed the odd habit of watching TV with the sound off. I’ve watched a lot of TV shows that way and for the most part I can keep up with the show. Obviously, I’m at a disadvantage if the speaker has their back to me or if there’s a lot of movement. However, I have gotten pretty good at filling in the blanks.

Or in the case of SyFy movies, making the movie even more interesting.

Now that I’ve gone full circle in a sense and am back to watching baseball regularly, I find myself once again being thankful for my skill. Sure it’s great for arguing managers, but my skills have improved since I was a kid. Now I use it to see what guys are talking about in the dugout and on the mound. I get a heads up at what pitch is coming next and I get to see what the guys on the bench and in the bullpen are discussing (hint: it’s not always baseball).

I’m still stumped by Spanish, though.

That’ll be the next level.

The Name Game

~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

In theory, parents take great care in selecting names for their children. The consider the meaning, possibly naming them after relatives, look at the initials, sound it out for the rhythm, spell it out for the look. They take into consideration the possible nicknames, good and bad, and seriously consider the consequences of the child living for the rest of their lives with that name.

In reality, they just pick something they like, spell it the way they want (something that’s gotten way out of hand), and then wonder why the kids end up hating their names.

To be clear, I don’t hate my name. I used to hate it when I was younger, as children tend to do when they’re growing up and establishing their identity, but now I can’t imagine being called anything else (nicknames excluded, of course). However, I have to admit that my mother saddled me with a pain in the ass.

It should be noted that this isn’t the worst name I could have gotten. She had several picked out for me, including Carrie, Lauren, Sara Elizabeth, and Christina Maria. Thanks to Dad for putting the kibosh on the last two.

It was late in her pregnancy when she added Christin to the possible name pool. She’d seen a movie called Hardcore starring George C. Scott. A lovely little film about a man finding out that his runaway daughter works in the sex trade. One of the characters was named Christin, though spelled Kristen in the credits, and Mom decided that she liked the name. We’ll just nevermind that the character was a porn star/prostitute and I would have to one day reveal that fact in my high school sophomore speech class.

(In contrast, my sister is named Lindsay after Lindsey Wagner. She got the Bionic Woman, I got a hooker. Years later I got my revenge by middle-naming two of my sisters kids after actors that portrayed a hobbit and a dwarf in The Lord of the Rings. Take that!)

I ended up with name Christin because my mother decided I didn’t look like a Lauren and Mom’s roommate in the hospital named her baby Carrie, which led mom to believe that I’d end up being one of many Carrie’s in my class. I always found that amusing considering Mom’s sister is named Kerri. Different spelling, same name, but that was apparently okay. And for the record, I didn’t have any Carrie’s in my class.

So I ended up with the name Christin.

My mother decided to spell the name the way it sounded, Chris-tin. And thus began my long, never-ending journey of constantly correcting people on the spelling and pronounciation.

The spelling I can forgive somewhat. I went to school with several variations of my name. Christin. Christan. Kristin. Kristen. Kristan. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how creative people can get. Out of boredom, I once came up with twenty-four different ways to spell my name. However, mine is one of the rarer versions. I could never find my own personalized stuff (I had to settle for Chris or Christi) and I could count on one hand the number of people I’ve seen with their name spelled like mine.

What really kills me is the pronounciation problem. I can also count on one hand the number of times I’ve had a teacher, college educated and literate, looked at my name and pronounced it correctly. Remember, my mom spelled it the way she thought it sounded. I’ve never had a kid read my name and mispronounce it. They’re learning to read and they learn that skill by sounding things out.

Adults, on the other hand, know how to read. They just glance at my name, get the gist of it, and I end up being called Christine, Christina, Christian, and in one instance, Kirsten. Going to school in a small town, I had a lot of the same kids in my classes for twelve years. By the time we were all seniors, a teacher mispronouncing my name would be met with a chorus of correction.

And that correction has continued, but I admit, I’m getting lazier and lazier about it. My name is misspelled on one of my bills. The IRS misspells my name on my tax refund checks (they really have no excuse as my name is spelled correctly on my social security card and they have that number). I had one driver at work calling me the wrong name for a month because I didn’t feel like correcting him on it. I waited until someone else did it, which was kind of a rotten thing to do, but when he asked me about it, I told him the truth.

“I’m used to people not getting my name right. I’ll answer to anything now.”

A lot of people don’t understand that. It’s my name. It’s a very important part of my identity.

True.

And thanks to a lifetime of people getting it wrong, that’s become part of my identity, too.