Remember your first apartment? Not the one you shared with 5 other roommates, but the first one you got on your own. The one you could finally afford because you got that job with the health benefits and salary. The one that you finally got to decorate in your own personal style without having to worry about anyone spilling Juicy Juice or mashing Cheetos into the upholstery.
That was probably the first time most of us branded ourselves; making the pilgrimage to Ikea or Z Gallerie to pick out the sofa, the chair, a dining set and bookcase. The furniture items that would tell our visitors who we were.
Were you the form over function adult; telling folks you were cool with stiff angels? Maybe you went all black lacquer with glass accents to show off your streak free Windexing skills. Or you were the minimalist, not because it spoke volumes about who you were deep down inside, but because you were too broke to afford too much because your looser boyfriend trashed your last place and you got stuck paying off the landlord so he wouldn't take you to court - seeing how you were the only one with enough of a credit record to even get the lease to begin with.
Me, I was the colorful gal, a fact made obvious in my choice of a royal blue couch, yellow chair and the unfinished wood coffee table I stained fire engine red. Two orange and two green chairs were tucked into my unfinished wood dining table I later covered in an all white tile mosaic; realizing only when I dragged it out to the yard sale years later that it weighed a bloody ton!
At that garage sale I unloaded everything but the couch - because it was literally stuck in my basement apartment. I the two years I had lived there the walls and floor in the hallway had shifted just enough so that extracting the couch was impossible. Even after removing the door from the hinges we still couldn't make it happen. So I sold it for a song to the gal moving into the place after me. It was kismet that she needed a couch and this one will forever "come with" this apartment. I was selling everything because I had gotten that big important job with a bigger salary and bonuses for being awesome. The sort of job that makes you leap blinding into a new home because you are in desperate need of a tax break. Then you exercise that big girl credit limit by replacing everything; I think my bed was the only thing I moved. Carefully coordinating deliveries from Room & Board, West Elm and Crate & Barrel, I reinvented myself as a contemporary gal with a mid-century modern flair. A little more grown-up, little more sophistication, bam-o a whole new me. Four years later I think a total of 8 people have actually seen the inside of my house mostly because I don't trust people to not spill or vomit on my good furnishings.
That would be the last time I branded myself, until now.
I've been writing under a nom de plume for the last few years. The name I lifted from the journals of a woman left behind in the corner of a storage unit I rented in Hollywood in the late 90s. I used it to reinvent myself as someone who is almost exactly like me, but who in the smoke screen created by the inter-webs, doesn't have my actions judged. Instead, hers are. I've not shared my identity outside of a small group of bloggers who have met me in the context of the woman behind the woman. A handful of people who I could easily name, but who are usually too drunk to remember the pronunciation of my real name. People who themselves are referred to by an alter ego.
She's become a brand in her own right; this woman I hide behind. She is the false front that protects me from owning any of these stories as my own. But I am at a crossroads; it is time to step from behind the woman and reveal myself. It's become a secret I hide, and not a craft I share. It used to be a struggle to figure out when to tell those special some ones about my internet secret, but over time I worried too much about what they'd think if they went plowing through the archives. Not all of these moments have been my finest, and very few are stories worth repeating, let alone allowing to muddle the waters of new relationships.
Bigger than all that, I call myself a writer and though I've announced and denounced it for some time now, there is the cold hard fact that I am writing a book. A book of stories about this woman whose identity I stole. A book about the life of a woman who is so much like me that I don't know where she ends and I begin. A big fat book of stories that is in dire need of editing because no one has the time to read the equivalent of
Atlas Shrugged anymore. A book that I will author. Me, not this internet persona. A book that will carry
my name on the dust cover. A name that requires branding along side the woman who has helped me get this far.
It's by far the largest branding project I've ever tackled. I expect to sell at least 2 more books than people who have visited my home since I bought it 4 years ago (8, to save you the trouble of reading back through this). I'm hoping a few more might visit my website, maybe click through to the purchasing site and plop one in a virtual cart to sit until they get enough to qualify for free shipping. I'm setting my sights high and it will take a team of people to get there.
I've got a web designer who has already had to break the horrible news that I can't use my signature Helvetica font (shocking for those of you who know me, that that is my font) all over the website. I blame PC users. But she is patient and kind and I think she "gets" me, and I trust her with my "look and feel". It's the first impression many will get of me, the writer. After that the universe got all poetic on me and started aligning in ways that I could not have predicted; a BFF in the personal branding business, a near and dear who is an online media marketing master, a handful of skilled photographers and an art director that I occasionally knoodle with. Let it be known I am not above making-out with any them to get free marketing/branding/advice.
I've got everything I need but a publisher and
Lulu makes that a "nice to have".
I'm ready to make it happen. So stay tuned for the new website. The big book title reveal and even my own personal coming out as the woman, behind the woman who may or may not really be me.