Establishing an identity for a new blog (or company!) has always been a daunting task for me. What word or two is going to sum up exactly everything I seek to do? What word can speak beyond simple syllables and encompass the essence and passion of what I am creating? It always seems so limiting, and frankly, impossible!
So when I started brainstorming what to name my blog, I went through A LOT of ideas. Some of them more abstract than others, for instance, “inspirare” – based on the latin to inspire. But nothing was sticking. So many awesome brands make it seem so easy to take a simple word (or made up word!) like Uber or Apple and make it so much more.
I had to really center myself and try to get down to the root of what I was trying to accomplish with my blog. After some time I found that the raw, honest answer that I positively did not want to confront was that…I was not entirely sure. I didn’t even have a clear direction to go in! But something inside of me was begging to be heard. That nagging voice finally helped me jump out of my limiting feedback loop that it was simply pointless.
So maybe I didn’t know the point, but did it matter? I was armed with a pretty strong why. I write because I cannot NOT write. It is an expression that is constantly swirling through my mind when I have a free moment to be present in my existence. I’m weaving words and stories in my mind and they are just waiting to be captured. I can ignore it, I can suppress it, but it’s always lingering there in the back of my mind when I come to stillness.
It brings me back to my favorite quote since I was a 13-year-old girl running home to a dial-up internet connection to write text-based RPG (role-playing game) posts on a horse forum. (Yes, I will collect your nerd cards now).
“I write for the same reason I breathe – because if I didn’t, I would die.” – Isaac Asimov
I’ve always written because that is how I can channel the emotion I feel in the world. It’s where I feel my existence, it’s where I am truly present – there is something magic that happens on a page. It might not be every word or every story, but when I flip back through my writing I find pieces that move me so much and I know that all that writing was worth it for that glimpse of something transcendent.
My first attempt at publicizing my writing was the year that I lived abroad in Prague. It was a blog named Fernweh Diaries and as it quickly started to gather a following, I jumped ship! People were actually paying attention…and it was kind of scary. I froze. I disappeared.
Regardless of publicizing my writing, I got lost in the otherness of Prague. A half a world away from everything I knew gave me the space to explore something new on my own…almost like all those fantasy books I read obsessively growing up. Prague became a deeply magical place for me. It was a time where I really came to know myself and fall in love with a place. It has resonated so deeply with who I am as a person and who I’ve become, that I knew instinctively that it needed to be in the title of this blog somehow. But how?
I travel back through the streets of Prague in a visual meditation. I take the tiny elevator from my flat down to the street level and walk the sloping city blocks downwards towards the river and past the metro with its deep escalator tunnels, across the busy street, dodging the trams and to the central square Náměstí Míru of my neighborhood.
In the center of the square there is a tall gothic church, St. Ludmila. It embodies everything that is beautiful and mysterious about Prague with its aspiring, rich towers reaching heavenwards. Its darkly delicate with years of weathering on the stone and it cascades a level of grandeur I can only grasp at.
I stand spellbound because it really is something out of this world and out of this time.
As I come back from my meditation I feel the energy of the words. I look up the translation of the Czech word Míru and find that it means peace. Náměstí Míru in English is peace square. It feels so easy and natural when I settle on MyMíru (my peace). Writing is my meditation, my mantra, and truly, my place of peace.
As I continue to share my thoughts and stories with you, I hope that you are also able to experience expressions of your own peace – small quiet places where you find stillness and reflection to be with yourself and your existence in this world.
