what's in a name?

When I decided to start up this little space, I must admit, picking a name really stumped me for a time...Choosing a title that not only depicts what my musings will be about, is true to me and my world, and has a cute, catchy ring to it - but also hasn't been nabbed by someone else already!!!

So I thought about it, and decided that honesty really is the best policy...

One of my dearest friends, many years ago, affectionately gave me the nickname of Bubble Girl.  This was her way of summing up the fact that I am an eternal optimist - a hopeless romantic who lives in a shiny bubble, where there are only happy endings and sunny thoughts.

At first I found this personal analysis a little insulting, as I took it to mean I was totally naive - silly even. When I was younger, my dearest friends sometimes sheltered me from controversial news, fearing I just wouldn't be able to handle it - that my perceived child-like sensitivity would be quashed.  This was hurtful at the time, frustrating that those who new me best thought I was incapable of processing some of life's more ugly obstacles.

Now that I am older, I know better... I embrace the idealist within, and feel lucky even that my natural instinct is to discard the what if worries, and skip straight to imagining those delicious possibilities.  Ignorance really is bliss most of the time.

Don't get me wrong, this doesn't mean that I am totally unconcerned by the struggles of loved ones, or the many injustices in the World, or my own inadequacies - quite the opposite in fact.  It is more about choosing to focus on things that are going well in my life, and spending less time agonising over those inevitably frustrating bumps in the road we all have to endure from time to time.

More often than not this works for me, despite the fact that I am married to a devoted pessimist, the King of Worry Town.  Such a combination can be very challenging at times, polar opposites are we in so many ways.  No doubt we manage to happily co-exist by balancing each others reactions, reeling the other in when one gets a little too far ahead.

I do hope that my daughter inherits the positivity gene from me, as I believe that happy kids make for confident kids.  I hope she is a Dreamer, a Hopeless Romantic, an Unyielding Optimist - for even though things might not always work out like she'd hoped, at least her days will be sunnier along the way.

(photo taken in Selcuk, Turkey - the dreamiest sunset, shared with The Boy and She who calls me Bubble Girl back in 2006, on the adventure of a lifetime)