A rambling entry about the blog naming process...

So, here we are at the new blog.

And it's called Gems.

Obviously I got the idea for this from the Gems of the Week posts I did at Where the Lovely Things Are (and will continue to do here).

I went with it because it was super-short & super-simple and I thought to myself: "There's no way you can get sick of this". Of course, you can get sick of ANYTHING: limonata is my favorite drink but after a couple (dozen?) cans I want something else. But I'll definitely be happy with it for at least a few years. I'm guessing.

It took me a long time to make a blog name decision, though.

First, I considered going the actual-name-as-blog-title route. You can't get sick of your own name! Well, you can - but it would be pretty damn hard to change it. In the end I decided against it, I'm going to be using this space to share the work of others: if the blog title was my own name it wouldn't make a lot of sense. Vetoed.

So, I put together a list of other people's blog names I enjoy -

The Aviary / Candy Castle - I like that these make the blog a place. "I found ____ over at The Aviary today".

Anne Louise Likes - This is along the lines of the actual-name-as-blog-title thing, but with "likes" added on. I also enjoy that it's LITERAL. I like to be literal with my blog titles (see - Illustrated Ladies, Colorful Homes, etc.). But that was part of the WtLTA problem: I'd be asking myself, "Should I post this?!?! It isn't a 'lovely thing' though..... you can't post that, Mallory" I'm insane.

Bonjour Johanna / Miss Moss - Name involved in the title in some way.

Fancy Fine - Ashley does something interesting, because her blog title is Fancy Fine, but the web address is her actual name. So if she wanted to change Fancy Fine to something else she could do so SUPER-easily. Plus, Fancy Fine in and of itself is a nice title.

All This Happiness / butter and brass / fieldguided / Length x Wit / oh, hello there / So on and so forth / thank you, ok / etc. - I like all these because they aren't literal. At all. The opposite of Where the Lovely Things Are. What will you find at a blog called thank you, ok? Who knows! Your content isn't dictated by your title.

I thought I was definitely going to go the non-literal route, but I had such a hard time thinking of something that didn't already have an air of "you could get sick of this" to it. I went through my favorite songs trying to look for phrases I could single out, I looked at my old list of favorite words (oh yes, I used to keep an actual list of favorite words), I thought about book or film references.... 

The end result of this process was a non-decision to name my blog "lobster". 

HA! I mean, I still think that would be kind of great. I love the word lobster and I love lobsters as creatures of the sea, but... it would be a rather strange.

None of the other options passed the would-you-want-to-tell-someone-you-just-met-that-blog-title test though. Yeah, in the end I decided against lobster, but if I'd been out some night and talking to a guy who asked me if I had a blog and I answered - "Yes! Lobster!".... I would've been completely fine with that. 

(They might've thought I was a total weirdo but that would've been THEIR LOSS. But also accurate because I am a total weirdo.)

My literal tendencies won out.... in an acceptable way. I'll never be reticent to admit that my blog is called Gems - it's too simple to be embarrassing. And it's literal because I plan to post "gems" here. Gems meaning awesome things and artwork and the such. But "gems" is more all-encompassing than "lovely" was. If I'm taking the time to post about something, I'll obviously consider it to be a gem, but I may not have necessarily classified it as "lovely". 

Blah blah blah. Is anyone still reading this?

Once I decided on Gems the only issue was getting the url. Gems.com was taken, so was gemsblog.com and gems-blog.com. I thought about gemsgemsgems.com because that would make the process of typing the url almost like an incantation (when you finish typing a gem appears on your keyboard!) but even THAT was already claimed! To add another gems seemed excessive and I had no interest in having a .net or whatever, so that's how I got to lookatthesegems.com. Which makes the blog even more literal, but by the time I shelled out my 10 bucks to own the url for a year I didn't even care anymore. 

So here we are. And here we'll stay. 

Eventually this blog will be accompanied by another tumblr I'm going to use for more personal and/or writing-centric things (because those are the only sort of posts that don't fit within my obsessive adherence to my literal blog name - those posts wouldn't be "gem-y"). I'll be sure to let you know when I start that. Not that you'd necessarily care, but - maybe. I mean, this rambling was obviously SO ENTRANCING that the idea of a blog devoted to more of it must be exciting you! Right?!! Haaaaa.

Back to the gems.