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Jan. 5th, 2008 10:40 pmI want to rename my journal.
I bought a rename token.
I picked out a new username.
I clicked on the link in the rename token email.
I filled in the new username in the appropriate slot.
I moved my mouse to the "Change Username" button.
...I couldn't quite bring myself to press it.
I haven't liked this username, in and of itself, for a really long time. I picked it on a whim way back in 2002, when I had no idea that LJ would come to be a meaningful part of my life and was mostly just concerned with getting the registration process over with. I don't mind the "slammerkin" part so much, but over the years it's seemed a less-than-adequate reflection of where I am now - yes, Emma Donoghue still kicks more ass than anyone has ever kicked, but I am not she and I am also not much of a slammerkin - and the "babe" just seems silly and juvenile. The name itself is overlong and unwieldy. It's just not a very good username.
But it's just hard to change. Somewhere along the way I became a slammerkinbabe in a way that I frankly do not understand. Me and slammerkinbabe, we've had some good times together. I was a slammerkinbabe when I trolled![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
thebookyoucrew, even though I wouldn't troll them today; there are better things to do with my time than engage in backdoor intellectual trump-carding. I was a slammerkinbabe when I got linked across what felt like half the Internet with that Wedding Crashers post, even though when I look back on it now that post seems a little... unhinged in its tone; I still believe those things, but I'm not sure I believe any longer that the way I said them was the best way to reach out to people and try to work for change. I was a slammerkinbabe when I went to the speed-dating event where I met λ, which became a dialogue-format LJ post; I definitely would no longer write in such detail about the real, local women I met at speed-dating in an LJ post were that to happen to me today. But that post was quintessentially Kylie in that it exemplified the ways in which I reshape my real life, my Kelly-life, into something cleaner and funnier and shinier and Kylie-er on this LJ. I have been a slammerkinbabe over the years that I have learned to do that, to create a sparklier person and a shinier life for myself in words on the Internet.
If I get my book published, it is inevitable that Kylie and Kelly will have to merge to a much larger extent than they have yet had to. It's inevitable that people will want to know where my blog is, given the topic of my book, and that it will experience an upsurge of readers who will know both my real name and my Internet name. If the book does at all well it would probably be smart for me to change the username to my own firstname-lastname combination or some variation thereof, like a![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
libba_bray or a halseanderson. That's obviously premature, and I'm not doing anything like that now. But I am thinking that as I have very little idea how the timeline on this book deal will go - though I recognize that it takes most YA authors years to get published, I also know that several clients of the agents that I may be working with have made a publication deal inside of a week of signing on with the agency - I should at least make some preliminary changes. Such as privatizing most of my journal and unlocking selected entries one by one. And, I guess, ditching the crappy username that I've been thinking on and off about changing for years. Better that I do that stuff long before it needs to be done than that I get caught flat-footed at any point.
And yet I have not changed my username yet. Not quite.
It's a sad sort of a thing to erase a slammerkinbabe.
I bought a rename token.
I picked out a new username.
I clicked on the link in the rename token email.
I filled in the new username in the appropriate slot.
I moved my mouse to the "Change Username" button.
...I couldn't quite bring myself to press it.
I haven't liked this username, in and of itself, for a really long time. I picked it on a whim way back in 2002, when I had no idea that LJ would come to be a meaningful part of my life and was mostly just concerned with getting the registration process over with. I don't mind the "slammerkin" part so much, but over the years it's seemed a less-than-adequate reflection of where I am now - yes, Emma Donoghue still kicks more ass than anyone has ever kicked, but I am not she and I am also not much of a slammerkin - and the "babe" just seems silly and juvenile. The name itself is overlong and unwieldy. It's just not a very good username.
But it's just hard to change. Somewhere along the way I became a slammerkinbabe in a way that I frankly do not understand. Me and slammerkinbabe, we've had some good times together. I was a slammerkinbabe when I trolled
thebookyoucrew, even though I wouldn't troll them today; there are better things to do with my time than engage in backdoor intellectual trump-carding. I was a slammerkinbabe when I got linked across what felt like half the Internet with that Wedding Crashers post, even though when I look back on it now that post seems a little... unhinged in its tone; I still believe those things, but I'm not sure I believe any longer that the way I said them was the best way to reach out to people and try to work for change. I was a slammerkinbabe when I went to the speed-dating event where I met λ, which became a dialogue-format LJ post; I definitely would no longer write in such detail about the real, local women I met at speed-dating in an LJ post were that to happen to me today. But that post was quintessentially Kylie in that it exemplified the ways in which I reshape my real life, my Kelly-life, into something cleaner and funnier and shinier and Kylie-er on this LJ. I have been a slammerkinbabe over the years that I have learned to do that, to create a sparklier person and a shinier life for myself in words on the Internet. If I get my book published, it is inevitable that Kylie and Kelly will have to merge to a much larger extent than they have yet had to. It's inevitable that people will want to know where my blog is, given the topic of my book, and that it will experience an upsurge of readers who will know both my real name and my Internet name. If the book does at all well it would probably be smart for me to change the username to my own firstname-lastname combination or some variation thereof, like a
libba_bray or a halseanderson. That's obviously premature, and I'm not doing anything like that now. But I am thinking that as I have very little idea how the timeline on this book deal will go - though I recognize that it takes most YA authors years to get published, I also know that several clients of the agents that I may be working with have made a publication deal inside of a week of signing on with the agency - I should at least make some preliminary changes. Such as privatizing most of my journal and unlocking selected entries one by one. And, I guess, ditching the crappy username that I've been thinking on and off about changing for years. Better that I do that stuff long before it needs to be done than that I get caught flat-footed at any point. And yet I have not changed my username yet. Not quite.
It's a sad sort of a thing to erase a slammerkinbabe.
