Digital Identity Diaries

“That’s my gamecenter account name,” I typed to my friend as we discussed a mobile game that he works on.

“That’s a window,” he replied, acknowledging that he understood the gist of the user name’s meaning.

“Yeah!” I exclaimed, happy he was getting the idea. “But it’s also a mirror, because a window shows us each a world that is a reflection of ourselves.” I felt a little embarrassed by how much thought I put behind the username, and realized that it may not be a sentiment most people share when creating their online personas. “Or something…. you know…. >.>”

I’ve had many internet identities throughout my life that each meant something to me during that specific time. I realized during this conversation with my friend that, without any intention of doing so, I have spent my entire digital life curating a diary of identities that capture some of the deeper parts of my time on this planet. They show the evolution of my sense of self and of how I want to portray myself to the largest world I know.

My earlier usernames from my preteen days centered around 2007, the year of my high school graduation. tweeter_2007 was the first username I ever created on Yahoo!. I recall the word “tweeter” being one of their username suggestions that Yahoo! gave me, but the memory is so hazy that it’s anyone’s guess. I can’t recall whatever happened to that account, but it didn’t stay with me very long, and it’s been so long that it honestly might not be the first user name I ever created.

Skipping past a few usernames (some of which are embarassing), beautifuloOorain was one of the many AOL Instant Messenger names I used throughout my teens. I was discovering a new sense of self expression through the internet and was a very emotional teenager. I was all about being “deep”. I still have lots of that awful “deep” teen angsty poetry saved on some hard drive in a box somewhere. Thinking about it makes me shudder.

I had an intense rock/metal period in my mid teens that lasted through college but mellowed out over the years. killerinme89 was the perfect shoutout username to a song I liked and an attitude I carried with me. It marked a time when I became very aware of my own flaws and developed a darker sense of self. I used it for a journal I kept online, which became the one I sustained up through my college years. I eventually moved the journal to a different URL when I abandoned LiveJournal for other blog providers. That username still belongs to me on that original site, but I’ve moved past that part in my life and have let go of that time. I relinquished the name along with the baggage of the past.

Over the recent years I’ve used multiple aliases on various websites, all of which I still use in some capacity. spacefeather, my current Medium URL/username (subject to change at any time for any particular willy-nilly reason) speaks to one of my loves and is a play on my name. An old coworker and friend calls me Feather, and I have such fond memories of him peeking his head over the cubical wall next to me to beckon me towards the amazing paintings he was working on. When the username first came to me, it didn’t have any particular meaning. But later I started thinking about what a spacefeather could be — part of a larger metal winged ship flying through the universe? A single feather from a bird that hitched a ride to space after having been hit by a rocket on its ascent into the black? Yeah, sure, that sounds neat. Space, though, and the ability to look up to the sky and feel so tiny is one of the most constant evocations of awe in my life. Ever since I can remember I have gazed upwards and been entranced by the moon and its tiny star sisters in the night sky. I think I’ll keep this name for a while.