What Am I Doing Here?

I've been trying to decide for a long time what to do with this blog space. I keep thinking I'll actually write something that could be considered "memoirs" ... but procrastination has so far won out. There is a bunch of stuff I wrote in two volumes of the Storyworth app, specifically for my son. I've considered putting them into book form to sell on Amazon, but I'm still vacillating about whether to do that or not. I've published 3 books of poetry, and I don't think anybody has bought a single copy of them. So maybe that's what I'll do here -- at least to start off with. Maybe after a while I'll also mix in some anecdotes or short-form memoirs... We'll see.

Anyway, here we go...

[Oh, just a note about the name. Some of you may already know this, but for those who don't -- 

The name on my birth certificate is Crystal Dianne Thomas. My mother wanted to name me Dianne, but she couldn't think of a middle name to go with it. Her mother insisted that I had to have a middle name, and time was running out to think of one. I wish I had been there to hear that conversation, because it seems to me there are plenty of good mellifluous names to follow Dianne. Nevertheless, my mother rejected whatever names Grandma suggested. Somehow or another, they ended up using the name Crystal, and putting it in front of Dianne. Now, the official story is that Grandma had a friend named Crystal and that's where the suggestion came from. I don't really believe that story, though. (The stories in our family change over time, so you're never sure which version is true. For instance, my mother later claimed she really wanted to name me Anne, whereas always before she had said Dianne was her very favorite name for me. But I digress...) Well, in all my years growing up, I never heard Grandma ever mention any friend by the name of Crystal. So I have never quite trusted that part of the story. In fact, lately I've been thinking about when my mom and dad were dating they used to love to go dancing at a place called the Crystal Palace. And I just wonder if maybe that's where the name Crystal dropped from. I can just hear my grandmother's voice saying, "You can't name a baby after a DANCE HALL!!" And my mother replying, "Oh yes I can! You just hide and watch."

Nonetheless, I was never called Crystal, but only ever was called Dianne in the family, and in the small town where we lived. Most of the people I knew probably didn't even know my first name was Crystal. But then I went off to college, and in the large freshman classes (they still were taking daily roll in the 1970s) my full name was on the roster, of course, and so the professors called out "Crystal Thomas" and I just didn't bother to correct them. And so, by the end of my first semester my name had effectively been changed. Everyone called me Crystal from then on. (I later dropped the "L" and legally changed it to Crysta. But that's another story for another day.)

Now, 54 years later, It seems like a real annoyance to have to go by two different names -- one for the family and childhood friends, and a different one for everyone else in my life -- since the internet and social media now throw us all together into one place in real time. So I came up with the clever (so say I) idea of smashing the two names together into one -- Crysta Dianne becomes Crystianne. And that's why this blog is called Crystianne's Blog.]