I’m finding that my biggest problem with creativity in these classes is not having the ideas themselves, but in fact, recognizing them as new ideas in the first place. Or the possibility of pollution by other ideas, and how far from someone else’s idea is mine?

I get information from hundreds of articles, tweets, conversations, webpages, blog posts, emails, LOLcats and now iPhone apps a day, and it’s difficult for me to say, “this is my new idea and it’s allll mine”. All someone has to do is tag a tiny part of it to someone else’s previous idea and boom, no longer mine, or original or different. And sometimes I have “ideas” that this other researcher already had, I just haven’t heard about it yet. So someone in the know says, “Oh, yeah, so-and-so talked about that last week in his blah blah blah”. So I don’t follow them, haven’t read the article and I don’t have a completely new idea, but heck, it was new to me, right? I have the same thought processes as this other brilliant person, I’m just behind the curve by a week?

Isn’t every “new” idea usually built upon other ideas? Is no idea an island? And on the recognition of an idea as new, I need to make sure I have a high tolerance for correction, for hearing that someone else has had the idea, and I need to verbalize my ideas more (or at least write them down), because while a broken clock is right 2x a day, perchance my idea is indeed new. Hmm. Bears thinking about.

So rather than promoting myself as my name, I have chosen an alias, stealingsand, that I feel represents me without being my actual name.

1st Law of Name Choice: Unique works

A lot of problems people have with choosing names stems from the fact that they haven’t chosen something unique. Like an unexpected combination of a gerund + a noun (laughing squid, anyone?). They instead choose something like “hook’em horns” which is a phrase every Texan is familiar with, and probably every fan of American college football has heard it. 1st Law of Name Choice:

The regularity with which the name you have chosen is used in common language is inversely related to the availability of that name on internet services.

Basically the more people who know or regularly use your phrase (or if you see it on a t-shirt, ever) the less likely it is that it will be available in every web application (yahoo, gmail, del.icio.us, etc.) and every new web application.

Ever tried to sign up for a web service with a name you thought was special? If you choose something common to the language you’ll end up being hookem_horns.75203@gmail.com instead of uniquely you. And every time you sign up for a new web service, you’ll have to choose a new variation of “hook’em horns”, maybe with a zero for the o or something absurd like that because someone else has gotten your name before you.

So what if I have a different one every time?

In the new web era of multiple social applications, we have friends who want to share in our endeavors online. And most of them may not have any idea what our real name is. I am on twitter as stealingsand, and when I opened a brightkite account I signed up as stealingsand. I sign up for every single service as stealingsand.

Now if my friend/business contact/potential employer knows that I am consistent (because I told them so), and that I have an account on a new website, they can guess what my alias is, and find me, and connect to me. They can see my work, my abilities, the breadth of my accomplishments or craziness. I can be found.

Now, if you don’t want to be found, or enjoy trying to remember if there’s an underscore or not in this particular login, go for it and sign up with everything with a different alias.

Why be found?

I haven’t never gotten a job above minimum wage that I didn’t know somebody before getting it. Never. Not always directly, but my social circle has been the path through which I became employed or got contracts.

And though everything is moving online, I believe that the essential social nature of people will not change. The modality will change, but not the essential nature. So people will continue to hire people they know or people their friends know, whether this knowledge is based on personal contact or on 140-character tweets.

So you need to be findable, and especially in my industr(ies), able to show a diversity of interest, talent and experience if you want to get jobs, and internet networking helps.

Now what?

So now you may be on board with the “unique, consistent identifier” concept I am proposing. How do you choose an alias to represent who you are?

This is a difficult process to recommend because only you know who you are. Look at yourself and figure out:

• who you want to be to the world
• what features about you are primary
• what features about you would sell best
• what you like/love/enjoy
• how your friends perceive you
• jokes you like
• ironies that piss you off
• other random stuff

You could ask friends hokey things like “what word come up first when you think of me” but then you’ll get answers that may be jokes or people saying, “what, is this a quiz?” or “I don’t know”. Or not.

Blogger Heather Armstrong of dooce.com fame chose dooce because it was a common typo she made while typing IMs. Yeah, really. You can get inspiration from anywhere.

Random name generators

There are a bunch of websites like bandnamemaker.com that help you to find huge lists of random names. A simple google of the phrase “random name generator” pulls up 320,000 results. Not too bad. Most of those are for actual “names”, subject to the 1st Law of Name Choice (see above). And those ones that link to “buy a new identity” sites, that’s not what I’m talking about. Am not advocating stealing someone’s identity, SSN, etc.

So why random? Random is good because it stimulates (simulates?) creativity for even the least creative person, and gives you ideas that you would never come up with alone. I just searched for “ocean” on bandnamegenerator and got these:

• Ocean Auction (huh. weird.)
• Deficient Ocean (not so much)
• Ocean Counselor (not so me)
• Eating Ocean (hmm)
• Ocean Judge (??)
• Frugal Ocean (so not me )
• Indecent Ocean (too…indecent)
• Septic Ocean (eew, but maybe if I were an alt band)
• Southern Ocean (too likely taken)
• Ocean Canal (nothing special)

But hit the refresh button and you get…ten more. And those ten can spark ten more of your own ideas. You can brainstorm and write down garbage until you find a gem. Or you can keep refreshing until you hit one that speaks to you.

Choosing my alias

When I was choosing it I seem to remember long lists of word combinations that I would reread and feel out. I was looking for something longer-lasting than a mere color fad or music craze. I wanted to represent myself.

I knew I wanted “sand” or “beach” or “ocean” or “sea” in my alias, but I didn’t want to be all little mermaid or kitschy flamingo-sounding. I wanted an edge. I didn’t want to be associated with those acrylic seashell decorations you see in the bargain bin.

I chose stealingsand because every time I visit a beach (lake, sea, etc.) I collect a tiny bit of sand, usually just a little baggie full and place it at home in a glass container with a calligraphed label. It reminds me of the vacations and relaxation I had there, the time I collected it, and it takes me away from the grind. And it’s fascinating for the scientist in me to see the contrasts between sands from beaches that are even just a few miles away, the composition of the sand and its ratio of shell particles to stone and coral.

On some beaches it is illegal (green sand beaches in HI, for example) but I have yet to actually go to those kinds of beaches. Either way, if I went to one, I’d totally still take a teaspoon of sand, at least, maybe get a bunch caught in my toes or my shoes and say “Wow, I didn’t know I had ten pounds of green sand in my Keds”. I would then be stealing sand.

Now, you could argue that inclusion of the verb “stealing” as an alias sets me up to be a thief to people who don’t know me, or maybe makes people go “ooh, she’d steal stuff”. But seriously, sand? The fact that sand is so often accidentally brought home, and rarely stolen, takes the bite out of the theft charge. And it makes you wonder, what would this person be doing with stolen sand anyway? The name associates with the sea, the ocean, the beach, all of the things I love so dearly but rarely get to see living here in Dallas.

Use it well, my son

It’s possible that eventually someone will be using the name you choose, no matter how careful you are with the choice. But in the meantime, maybe you can make a case for yourself with primacy in signing up for all of your web services with a single username. If it ever went to court, you’d have been there first.

If you choose a unique identifier and use it consistently (even to the point of using it as your “name” on certain services that don’t allow a distinct alias) you will never have to worry about:

• what username to choose (no more Jonj0n_234)
• forgetting what your username is
• whether someone remembers that it’s a dash, not an underscore in the name you chose
• being lost in the shuffle
• contact info that is long and cumbersome
• contact info that is forgettable

A cautionary note, though: don’t choose something very underoos. It needs to be flexible enough to represent you personally and professionally. Because you’re out there if you’re online, like it or not…

Sa is the eldest, 8 years old. I chose the “Calvin and Hobbes” font in a brilliant purple because she is a beautiful girl but at least a beer short of a six pack. Forever my kitten, forever my little sweetheart even though she can crush the breath out of me when she walks on me or walk so softly I wonder if it’s her baby brother on me. Cottony fluffy Sa got a very childlike typeface.

Taylor is the second eldest at 7 years. He got “Jenkins“, a laid-back typeface in a sandy sunny yellow color that fits my beach-bum boy to a T. I can imagine Taylor chillin on a beach in La Jolla. Totally. He’s always relaxing, always forgiving, always just one step away from his mama. The yellow is for my sunshine boy who has been the light of my heart since he was a bitty baby.

Kiki, princess of darkness, gets the only one with a black background. Not because she’s evil per se, just because I can’t ever figure her out. She seems to harbor a lot of fear and resentment and it’s just so sad that she can’t seem to have a normal feline relationship with me. Or anyone. So poor Kiki (who should have been named Sybil for more than one reason) is a shadows and light Gill Sans.

Kia is a little sprite, fast as the wind, though just as elusive. I chose an elvish font, Camellia, which is thin and light, green as the forest this little sprite must have come from. She is impossible to catch and can only be lured out of the wilds of the underbed or the undertable or the underchair by katsuobushi or her daddy’s tentative chin-scratchies in the dark of the morning. Or maybe a thrown mousie that she can fetch. You can catch her on film (she’s very patient) but just try to touch her…

Ah the Pix, our Pixel, the new baby. He’s very metro, what with his matching cocoa sox and muzzle and tail. So pink works for him, along with the interest point of the asterisk replacing the “x”. His font is Avant Garde because he is always on the cutting edge of being swatted for being naughty.He always makes his way back to my good side with those big blue anime eyes and kitteny mew. I swear he doesn’t actually meow like that for real, he’s putting me on, but you know what? I could care less.

I didn’t keep track of them throughout the day – most of this is done in retrospect, which I wanted to do to see how conscious I was of the brands that I use. I chose a particular day and went thru it segment by segment. My commute home is the same as my commute out, so that was pretty easy. But I kept finding myself wondering about distinctions – do I put my underwear in the timeline? Do I put T-Mobile (my cell carrier) or just my cell phone (Samsung)? If I put T-Mobile I need to put my electric company and the ISP we use and on and on so I stopped. And my evening hours were a little fuzzy, mainlybecause I was so tired. I forgot to do my chewing gum, then thought screw it, because that’s a little too anal.

Or is it?

Interesting exercise, and I am thinking about extension exercises, just to see.

Voila, my “brand day”.

I was discussing how difficult it is to get good, quality photographs of people for websites and newsletters. I said that the pictures are often fuzzy, low-quality, all black…

The woman across the table from me asks if I have a problem with pictures of black people.

Um, have we met?

I was so hurt and insulted. Was she trying to “show me my place”? Was she trying to find problems with me when there are very very few? She attacked my values by insinuating that I am a racist, she attacked my morals, she attacked who I am.

I expect sexism, I expect racism from Asian people (God, hasn’t that happened), but really, in this meeting at the office, I didn’t expect to be branded a racist. Everybody said oh it’s just a misunderstanding; I said they must not know me if they think I am like that, they do not know me at all.

She made me see her as a black person first, a black person who is looking for me to be prejudiced against her when it doesn’t matter to me if she has six eyes and antennae. I have never really cared what color anyone is; my only qualification for respect is that you be a good person and you be good at what you do. Now I have to factor in this harassment, this eggshell-walking double-entendre implication in everything I say. As a designer I think in images, colors, clarity, focus, quality. I don’t think, Oh, here’s a black person, or Oh, here’s a white person.

From now on I will refer to the color black as #000000 or R:000 G:000 B:000 just to prevent a misunderstanding. Because now that I’ve been branded this way, who gives a shit if they understand me?

I feel so disillusioned. I feel what she has been fighting against her whole life. I’m trying to understand her point of view, but at some point, someone has to break the cycle. Someone has to be bigger and better than that, and today it didn’t happen.

What’s an effective synonym for black that has no racial implications? I can’t think of one right now, and so ripped up inside because I know that no matter what I say, now that the implication is there, it is impossible to remove. They’ll always think of me as the girl that might be racist. I might have to blow this popsicle stand because I’m not here to be misunderstood and labeled and harassed. I’m still so hurt.

Me? of all people?

You are my sunshine
My fuzzy sunshine
You make me happeeeeee
When skies are greeeeey
You’ll never know Tayyyyyyy
How much I luuuuuuuuuuv yew
Please don’t take my sunshine awayyyyyy

And now… (drumroll please)

Pixel’s Song

Ooooooooooooooh
WHERE oh where has my little cat gone!
Oh where oh where can Pix beeeeeeee?
With his ears so SHORT
And his tail so LONG
Oh where oh where can Pix beeeeeeeee?

Thank you, thank you. Don’t forget to tip your waiter.

Watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall last night in a deserted theater in Plano. Here’s the thing. Iron Man came out, which made this the optimal weekend for viewing a comedy that appeals to the same demographic. There were maybe 10 people in the 10:00 show on Friday night. I was the only one laughing about 50% of the time. Do people not get it? Am I obnoxious? Am wondering really, because the silence, esp. during an obviously faux sentimental moment I laughed and someone in the theater actually sniffed at me. Jeez, people.

Am searching desperately for a new bathing suit since we’re going to Miami this summer. Miami = beach = hot and sunny = need bathing suit that nothing pops out of. Maybe I should say a bathing suit instead of a “new” one, since I don’t even know if I have one (that’s how sad it is in my world lately).

Looked at Target, my catchall shopping mecca, and some fit too tightly (rubber band) some pooched unattractively in the front (like I am missing man-parts or something). I try on at least a thousand bathing suits a year before I either:

a. break down and cry or
b. give up and go get some french fries

No one looks good under fluorescent lighting, we all know that, but super-pasty-God-I-need-a-tan chicas like myself look positively ghastly under fluorescents. When your veins stand out against the bathing suit, you look more like an extra in “Night of the Living Dead” than someone who might possibly ever consider themselves in any way attractive.

That’s shopping in a store I can afford.

Online shopping, though, Jesus, can you imagine buying a bathing suit online? One that’s not custom-made, I mean. Between brands, a size 10 can vary from cutting off the circulation to my thighs to being unsafe to wear around children. Since one of my biggest nightmares is the possibility of my sister-in-law’s kids clinging to my legs and accidentally dragging down my bathing suit, methinks buying a suit online without ever having touched or tried it on is ridiculous.

Does ANYBODY buy bathing suits online?

I plan to spend about $100 on a suit, seeing as how it will be worn about once a year and, other than niece and nephew hazards, rarely be exposed to anything more strenuous than my dresser drawer, it’s not a bad investment. Last almost a lifetime, I betcha. But online?

Scenario: OK, I get the damn thing in the mail, rip open the box and voila! not my size, almost guaranteed. So I have to send it back. Ten wasted dollars later, do I buy ANOTHER one online and then send it back? Final cost of said bathing suit would likely approach $200. Actually, I’d probably get tired of spending money and just keep the one I had most recently purchased and call it a day. Fierce resemblance to rubber band notwithstanding.

That’s how I got my last bathing suit. There was a party and I HAD to have a bathing suit (sister pressure, trust me) so I went out and tried a bunch of them on, cried a little bit, and bought the one that I’d tried on last, because I look the same in all of them. That’s why I don’t know if I have one now, well, probably have kept that one somewhere for another one of those “MUST HAVE” occasions. Blech.

Am actually looking for THIS bathing suit (haha, wish me luck) and since I can’t find it anywhere online except in this article…