Day 14: What's In A Name?

#YourTurnChallenge was a 7-day blogging challenge started by Seth Godin's Special Projects Lead Winnie, which I was honored to take part in. And I'm gonna keep going!!! I've decided to extend the challenge to 30 days. I will blog everyday from Jan 19th until Feb 17th. Wish me luck and happy reading.

As a kid I very much disliked my name because everyone thought I was a boy. Okay, I was named after a guy, my great grandfather or was it my great great grandfather? Even though I was a tomboy I was not a boy! To add insult to injury when we traveled not one place had my name on any of their tacky souvenirs. But it looked like a girl named Candy totally scored; she was one of the lucky ones. So if I had a girls name would that change anything? Since I have a boys name did that define me? What is in a name, anyways?

Before I got India (my super rad boxer) I did some research. I was nervous about owning a dog and wanted to do it right. I had never owned a dog, a hamster once and a cat, that’s it. The hamster escaped and was never seen again, same with the cat. I didn’t want a strike three. So I turned to the pros and I listened to Caesar Millan’s book on tape. He suggested naming your animal before you meet them so you won’t define the dog by their behavior. Let’s say you have a hyper dog and you decide to call him Spaz. You have now forever associated the dog with being a Spaz so it will be a Spaz, through and through. I decided that I wanted India’s name to come from a calm centered place and since I’m really into yoga her name is a reflection of yogas birthplace. So is India defined by her name, nope, she’s a spaz!

Why all this name obsession? I’m struggling to name my project. Nothing has come out and spoken to me…well not really anyways. I’m trying to take careful thought and make sure that this project has a profound name. NastyGal is named after a super rad bad ass song, I wanna have a rad name too. But will the name define what happens with this project? Define how people view me? Do people, bands, companies become defined by their name or vise versa?  What if I choose a dumb name? Holy shit, I think I just had a Woody Allen moment. Oh crap, see, he’s even defined by his name.

My brain hurts. Too much thinking and over thinking, I think it's time to NOT think. Time to let go of the spaz, center myself and maybe have a bit of candy.

*I'd love to hear from you, have questions? Comments? Please contact me at casey [at] caseyshepparddesigns [dot] com Thank you again for reading*