What’s your handle?

My son actually seemed rather delighted by the fact that his mother has a blog – a little fact he discovered a week ago. How he has been oblivious to this little fact is beyond me. Then again, it shouldn’t be. He’s seventeen. Unobservant for the most part, and ever-so-slightly self absorbed. His discovery came upon the heels of mentioning another blog to me, and my comment of ‘perhaps posting something to that effect on my blog’.

“You have a blog, Mom? That is so cool!”

To say I was surprised by his reaction is probably an understatement. His request to actually see my blog left me more than a little stunned. I was flabbergasted when he actually sat down and read a few of my posts. And if you’d breathed too hard on me, I probably would have fallen over when he said, “Gee Mom, you’re quite good.”

There was a downside to all of this though. It came a few minutes later, when he was about to vacate my seat at the computer, and he suddenly saw it.

“Oh no! Mom! Seriously?”

This didn’t surprise me in any way, and I didn’t even need to ask what he was referring to. I knew. We’d had this conversation about my Skype account. I rolled my eyes for dramatic effect, and explained my reasoning behind what he was commenting on. He laughed – too hard, for my liking – and then shrugged, leaving me alone in the dining area. He did call out a few seconds later from his bedroom,
“Actually Mom, I guess it’s kind of clever, and at least it’s better than your Skype.”

I stuck out my tongue, like a two-year-old, even though there was no one in the room to see me, and yelled back, ‘Thanks’. I still don’t know what tone I was meaning to use, but it came out sounding slightly sarcastic, and brought him back into the sitting room area, where we established that it actually was genuinely quite clever in his eyes, and that this was a situation of no harm, no foul.

Of course, he was talking about my ‘name’.

No Passing Fancy was borne from things in my life that have been ‘passing fancies’. Things that serve their purpose for a very short space of time, and then I move on. I wanted this blog to be something I could be dedicated to, somewhere that I could commit to writing things down – be them for humor, encouragement – or as a source of information on some topics. This blog was not for the intention of being another ‘passing fancy’ in my life. I also wanted to try and build a ‘network of followers’ – people who would take a few minutes to come along and read my posts. I wanted them to keep coming back – I didn’t want to be a ‘passing fancy’ on their list either.
And the name ‘No Passing Fancy’ came to be.

My Skype name is a little more ‘interesting’.

I have to warn you right now – I am very seldom on Skype, and if you send me any requests there, it may take a good few weeks for me to actually see them and accept. If I do happen to be on there, then there is a really good chance that I am actually on a Skype call with my ‘best friend and sister’ in Kansas. Here goes the story of my Skype name:

My son recently added Skype to his mobile, in order to participate in a chat with two other classmates for a discussion on a project. He wanted to test it out first before giving them his Skype name, because he wasn’t really sure how Skype worked, so better to fail with mom than anyone else. He came through to my bedroom, where I was hanging out with my dog and trying to read my new thriller without being disturbed. Looking rather sheepish, he asked me for my Skype name so that he could add me. I told him what it was, and he looked up from his phone and said just one word, in a bit of a ‘drawn out, whiny’ kind of way.

“Why?” Even after my explanation, he shook his head in that ‘my mom is so embarrassing’ kind of way, and walked slowly back to his own room. Later, however, I did get a Skype message from him saying, ‘Okay. I get it. I guess it’s not that bad.’

prisonerofhope1. Yes, that’s my Skype name. And I can’t see that it can be that bad, considering I had to add the ‘1’ because someone is already using it.

When I got divorced many years ago, it was actually my dad who asked me to create a Skype account. Back then, I didn’t have webcam capabilities on the ‘ancient’ laptop I was using, but at least it meant that he could call me internationally and talk to us, for a whole lot less than on the telephone. At that time, there was a magnet on my fridge that had a Bible verse on it which had been given to me by a close friend as part of an ‘encouragement parcel’ she had put together for me just after my divorce. (I don’t know what ever happened to that magnet!)

It spoke of prisoners of hope returning to their fortress, and having twice as much restored to them.

Those words, ‘prisoners of hope’, seemed to increase the blood flowing into my heart and mind, and etched themselves into my soul. Because during my divorce, everything was so overwhelming and there were so many obstacles suddenly before me that I had never even considered a ‘possibility’ in my life, ever. During that time emotions ran high, and I seemed to move between anger and sadness with each minute that passed – which led to moments of great confusion when I didn’t know what I was actually feeling, if anything at all.

But I just couldn’t give up hope. Something in me wouldn’t allow it. I would speak the words, “Oh, it’s hopeless”, and yet in my heart I knew that I still ‘hoped’. I hoped my emotions would eventually be a little more under control; I hoped that I would be able to survive financially even with two children to support; I hoped that one day I would be blessed with a romantic relationship again – not soon, but one day; I hoped that there would not be too many things to impact my children’s lives negatively. I hoped.

And every time I opened my fridge I would laugh out loud and tell myself, “Yip. You’re a prisoner of hope all right, my girl!”
So when I was asked to set up a Skype account and needed to think of my Skype name, not a single other thing came to mind other than what I eternally seem to be : a prisoner of hope!

What’s your ‘handle’, and why? (….if you feel like sharing, I’d love to read about it….)