tales of an ordinary girl

I thought I'd try to explain the origin of the name ordinarygirl and how I chose the name for this blog. Longtime readers may know that I don't really have a theme in my posts. I write about myself and the things I'm interested in. It's a bit chaotic perhaps, but it works for me.

I used to post on Live Journal as something of a diary, mostly private posts. A little over a year ago I decided to abandon my diary there for Blogger. It took some time to get used to the idea that private posts weren't an option. Occasionally I still post something private over at Live Journal just to get it out of my system. But not having the ability to post privately has been a good thing because I'm more likely to share what I'm thinking with the outside world.

I grew up in a very fundamentalist religious household. Even after I struck out in my own direction it was hard to shake the influence of that over my life. I always held out that there was something supernatural, even if it wasn't something that could be explained. I believed that there was something there that made people special.

Over the last few years though I've rejected the entire idea of a supernatural. It may make me feel special, but believing in something I can't even define or prove became too difficult. Realistically I could make up anything or borrow a belief just to have something to believe in. But why make something up or continue to try to find meaning in it when there are many things that can be defined and understood that I can believe in?

When I created this blog I wanted to acknowledge the commonality of humanity. Yeah, that sounds pretentious. I guess it was more of embracing what makes me human, regular everyday stuff and all. It wasn't that I didn't think being different was important too, but I wanted to focus more on the parts of me that connected me to people in general, the parts that are overlooked because they're just not really that cool.

I had a new appreciation for who I was and I just wanted to be that ordinary person. Maybe it's a bit of the whole uniqueness for the sake of uniqueness is overrated.

It really wasn't that conscious of decision. I had all of this stuff in the back of my mind at the time, but I pretty much just decided on the name and started writing.

How did you decide your name and the theme for your blog? Was it a conscious decision or something that evolved over time?