Sunday, October 7, 2007

What’s in a name?

Tension – Magellan – Philosophy: all names I considered for this blog (and, consequently, all taken). One of my distinct characteristics is the flight from one excitement to the next – if I were to compare myself to combustion, my life would be a series of fireworks rather than a slow-burning hardwood fire. Given this, I should probably just pick a name and get on with it – I’m liable to forget why I was so excited about blogging in a week or so. Even so, names are very important to me. They are permanent and I can’t help feeling they play a role in determining the fate of they're owners. I'm pretty sure choosing the correct name may contribute to the success or failure of this blog. On the other hand, since I tried all the wonderful, succinct, symbolic names above and none of them had been updated since 2002, maybe I should just get on with it. Well, it looks like “get on with it” wins it, 2-1.

OK, I lied – my idealism, as it so often does, won out. I couldn’t just name it anything, so I came up with identityprogression.blogspot.com. It comes from a philosophy class I took at the U of C. A strict logical interpretation of identity would not allow me to say that I am the same person I was a year ago, nor will I be the same person in a year’s time. I will have changed maybe learned, maybe grown but definitely changed. Don’t tell my wife – I’ve been doing the dishes a lot lately.

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