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Musings & Rants

“The name is the thing, and the true name is the true thing. To speak the name is to control the thing.” — Ursula K. Le Guin, The Rule of Names

To knowing someone’s true name is to have power over them. It’s an old concept that most link to Le Guin’s writing and the world she created for the Earthsea books, but it’s far older than that. In Bulgaria, as in most Eastern Orthodox countries, names are celebrated for their power over their holder. Name Days are common enough and heavily populate the Bulgarian calendar to celebrate bearers named after saints, flowers, trees and virtues.

Read More Bearing Someone Else’s Name

I haven’t been writing. Not at all. Not one word for myself. I have given all my words elsewhere. I have painfully typed up the same words, the same call to actions, the same sentence structures for my office job. Used the same inbred sales vocabulary. Stunted my texts at the same length. I performed plastic surgery on the same thought. Over and over and over.

Hey, I wanted this.

This is what I repeated to myself for more than a year when exhaustion first settled in my mind and spread until sleep didn’t cut it. I said a lot of things to myself, including:

  • Hey, I made it. This is my dream. Getting paid for writing.
  • Dude, I moved out on. I wrote myself out of a life I feared, still fear, I’ll lead until I die.
  • I’m learning a new trade.

Read More What Do You Do When You’re Afraid of the Words?