Why ... Lady Kat?

My name is Kathee, which is derived from my birth name of Kathleen. While growing up, my parents would refer to me as "Kathy" (Traditional, eh??)

I eventually wanted my own individuality (my first identity crisis) and became creative with my name since there were many other Kathy's in my social arena.   Rather than adding different letters to specify which K-a-t-h-y I was, i.e., Kathie with an IE, Cathy with a C, etc., I simply removed the L and the N from KathLeeN, creating Kathee!

While filtering through my  emailbox  one morning, I noticed an email from me.   Since I have several email accounts, I often forward email between accounts. It was no surprise for me to find mail addressed to me ... from me.   This particular email though, was just a little different however.   I opened the email from "me."  In it,  a gal named Kathee introduced herself, having recently visited my homepage.   She indicated that she had never run into another Kathee before with the name spelled the same.  We quickly became epals, exchanging url's and information about our lives -- which had, coincidentally, many, many parallels!!  In fact, we're so much alike, that I used her  words to describe how we changed our names in high school!  Our stories were identical!!  You must check out Kathee's masterpiece, Kathee dot com.  I must say, I'm proud to be associated with ... Kathee!

When I first obtained an email account back in 1996,  I quickly made many new acquaintences on the local discussion groups of my freenet, Aztec Computing.  One gentleman  in particular would reply to my email with the salutation of  "Kat"  and I soon began to incorporate  "Kat"  into my email with everyone.  I'd vary it a bit, depending on who I was writing and the subject matter of the letter.  Sometimes I'd close my letters with "sassykat" if I was in a feisty mood, or "love your kat" to family, or "busykat" if I was on a working on a deadline.  A fellow with the email nickname of "bobcat", often poked fun at my name and would make comments about my kategorically, katastrophic life, always using  "kat"  in place of any "cat" sounds in words.  Another gentleman I corresponded with, affectionately referred to me as, "Lady K" in his replies to me.

When I launched my first website on Tripod.com in 1996, I pondered over a name for my site.  Most of the websites I visited had a catchy name. Who will I "be" for my website  ... "Lady K's" or  "Kat" or should I stick with the tried and true name, Kathee?   Here I was at age 40+ and I was still trying to find myself!!   I carefully selected the site name,   Lady K's  because it had a royal, majestic,  forget-me-not ring to it.   But ... after receiving a few emails that were sent to me by visitors to my site that were obviously cases of mistaken identity,  (don't ask!!)  I quickly decided I needed to find a more meaningful name!

Now I had the challenge of determining who I really was!

I was quickly getting known on the internet as "Lady" because of my first website and my name was already recognized as "Kat" in email worldwide (makes me sound infamous, eh?) so I then decided to incorporate  Lady Kat's  for my website name.

In the summer of 1998, I attended the Southwest Regional PC User's Conference in San Diego, California, and met another Lady Kat! Ohmigosh!!!!  This Lady Kat was complete with a domain name of  Kat on the Net,  her own trademark and a monthly newsletter!!  Aside from feeling iNsAnLeY jEaLoUs, of this Kat having such a clever and personalized domain I wondered, "What on earth was I going to do now???  Someone else had my name again!!" I pridefully thought I was so clever that I was the only Lady Kat in the world!! After having talked with the other Lady Kat, though, I realized that there was no competition whatsoever between our websites. It was only our names that sounded the same. It really wasn't so bad ... most people share their names with other people in the world too.  The other Lady Kat only referred to herself as Lady Kat, but her pride and joy was actually her  Kat on the Net  Newsletter and Website!  Whewie!!!  I'm home free now!! I can still be Lady Kat!! (Like she was going to stop me anyway?)

There was still a part of me that wanted complete individuality - okay, I'll admit it, I was still going through an identity crisis. So there would be no confusion ever again about which Lady Kat I was, I added "Home Away From Home"  to my website name. Then I discovered that people all over the world were naming their websites "Home Away From Home" also. The Internet had gotten so big since its beginnings that I could never win. I realized deep down inside that I honestly didn't need any special identity -- I was secure in who I was. H'yeah right!!

In my quest to be unique on the internet, I therefore chose to park my personal website under a domain that more accurately reflected what I do. No matter where my site is hosted from here on out,  I am / I will  always will be remembered by some as Lady Kat,  but I am now proud owner of my own domain, Life Story Writing Network dot Com and that is where I will be from here until e-ternity! No more will I be trying to find myself again. Ha-ha! I am who and where I will be as Kat, Kathee, Kathleen or whoever I call myself. Life Story Writing is my passion and there is nowhere else I'd rather be. Who I am will eventually come out in my writing.

But ... with this identity thing still lingering, I therefore chose to control Life Story Writing and couldn't resist the temptation to purchase all three major Life Story Writing domains; Life Story Writing dot Com,  Life Story Writing dot Net and Life Story Writing dot Org.

For Mother's Day of 1999, I gave my mother a lifetime gift ... Life Story Writing dot Net.  The other site is Life Story Writing dot Org,  which is life story writing more commercialized and I chose to use Life Story Writing dot Com for myself as a more personalized website and home away from home for my own family life stories.

Ah! It is wonderful to be secure at last! Well, that is, until my next identity crisis. Egads, is it never ending?