What's In A Name?

Who knew the most challenging aspect of starting a blog would be choosing its name?  

My first trouble was that I had only a vague concept about what the content of my blog would be. Which of my passions/interests/jobs would serve as the most interesting blog content for my readers? Who would these readers be? My friends? Other teachers? As I began my search for a title, these questions swirled through my head and, since I have not answered any of them yet, continue to swirl.

My second trouble was capturing my nebulous idea for a blog in a short, pithy title that had not already been claimed.  Every time I thought I had struck gold, I was confronted with the message "name unavailable." As I inputed what I thought to be creative blog titles and continually had them rejected, I foresaw a horrible dystopian future in which each individual had a unique name and parents were forced to enter name ideas for their future children into a database until they discovered one that was “available.” Move over Apple Blythe Alison Martin! Here comes Lychee Jocund Claribel Calio!

Blog Titles that Weren't to Be (for me) Because They Already Exist:

The Reading Teacher

The Teaching Reader

Two Roads Diverged in a Wood

The Road Less Traveled

The Road Less Traveled By

The Road Not Taken

Travel, Read, Be

Look, Travel, Write

Time to Write

A Time to Write

The Write Time

It's Writing Time

Time2Write

Wherever You Go, There You Are

WhereverUGoThereUR

When my brainstorming took a tragic turn into substituting single letters and numbers for entire words, I knew I couldn't go it alone. It was time to consult my trusty friend Google.

After several inquiries turned up short, Google introduced me to an Oscar Wilde quotation, which I immediately loved and which eventually became the source material for my blog title. (Mostly because it was "available.")

“It is what you read when you don't have to 

that determines what you will be when you can't help it.” 

Admittedly, by excerpting this quotation into a short, catchy blog title, I altered the author's point altogether.  What once was a cogent statement about self-discovery had been mangled into a cliche English teacher command: "Read When You Don't Have To." (One which, I might add, is typically preceded or proceeded by the assignment of hundreds of pages of reading homework.)

In the end, I like the title of my blog.  I don't love it, but it will suffice. It is a piece of an overall statement about reading as a means to learning about self.  As an excerpt, it is a mantra parroted by parents and teachers the world over, to their children and to themselves, in an effort to capture moments of the quiet solitude afforded by reading in a world that never stops humming.