I check my look in the mirror: I want to change my clothes, my hair, my face
In conversation with a friend about my last entry closing this journal, he made a comment I feel appropriate:
"OK, so you're finished with it: but that's not an ending, it's an abandonment. Anything you've been working on that long deserves something better."
Annoyingly (because this is someone to whom I hate to be wrong), he was right. So here we go.
Choosing a name is an important thing for me: something that you use to signify yourself shapes yourself and that word. For a long time, I've used the moniker 'Ieyasu.' The name, that of the first Tokugawa shogun, represented a lot of what I wanted to be. Harsh and abrasive, wise and patient, cunning and yet narrowly honourable, everything his predecessor Hideyoshi wasn't. I liked Ieyasu and his history, and the name was a condign choice.
But no matter how well designed a thing is, cling to it too long and it begins to wear. In the real Ieyasu's case, this was over 300 years of stability and stagnation; in my case, it's been many fewer years but in many cases much the same.
Under this name there's been quite a few arguments and debates, some pleadings and romance, and a host of new people met on a number of continents. But gradually, the name is going to fade away, in favour of something more appropriate.
Recently there have been a lot of changes, and they will continue. Some of them will be as small as my shaving my beard; some will be much more involved and life-changing. And as they do so, it becomes good to choose a new name. It is time to learn some new things: some new tricks, some new skills, some new ways of relating to people. I've become so accustomed to the tools I normally use that they define me, and are ceasing to be useful any longer.
I'll still use this account for commenting in the diaries of friends, and its voice will be much the same. But as far as new entries go, this will very hopefully be the last. Old patterns are hard to escape, and they are better to end while new ones are emerging.
"OK, so you're finished with it: but that's not an ending, it's an abandonment. Anything you've been working on that long deserves something better."
Annoyingly (because this is someone to whom I hate to be wrong), he was right. So here we go.
Choosing a name is an important thing for me: something that you use to signify yourself shapes yourself and that word. For a long time, I've used the moniker 'Ieyasu.' The name, that of the first Tokugawa shogun, represented a lot of what I wanted to be. Harsh and abrasive, wise and patient, cunning and yet narrowly honourable, everything his predecessor Hideyoshi wasn't. I liked Ieyasu and his history, and the name was a condign choice.
But no matter how well designed a thing is, cling to it too long and it begins to wear. In the real Ieyasu's case, this was over 300 years of stability and stagnation; in my case, it's been many fewer years but in many cases much the same.
Under this name there's been quite a few arguments and debates, some pleadings and romance, and a host of new people met on a number of continents. But gradually, the name is going to fade away, in favour of something more appropriate.
Recently there have been a lot of changes, and they will continue. Some of them will be as small as my shaving my beard; some will be much more involved and life-changing. And as they do so, it becomes good to choose a new name. It is time to learn some new things: some new tricks, some new skills, some new ways of relating to people. I've become so accustomed to the tools I normally use that they define me, and are ceasing to be useful any longer.
I'll still use this account for commenting in the diaries of friends, and its voice will be much the same. But as far as new entries go, this will very hopefully be the last. Old patterns are hard to escape, and they are better to end while new ones are emerging.