What's in a name?

No, I do not have an affinity for Scarlett Johansson movies.

Not that I don't enjoy her as an actress, that's just not the main reason behind the naming of my brand new blog.

I decided to title it "Lost in Translation" at the end of a fruitless & rather annoying venture into the world of linguistics. 

Before I get into that, I'll explain why I even created a blog & a little about myself.

I have a love affair with words. Simply put. I think that next to natural body language, words are the best way to express yourself. I secretly resent the quote "When words fail, music speaks", because in my mind, words never fail unless you're absolutely crippled with emotion that you can not physically form the necessary mouth movements to make a word. In which case, you can write about said emotions later. 

I am disgusted with the way the English language has been raped by the slang & trends of this day & age. Albeit, I am 20 & I do engage in my fair share, but when it's the time to have a mature & dignified conversation, it's plagued with words not found in dictionaries, foul language & the dreaded "like" interlaced between every word it seems. So, to take out my frustrations, when I do sit down & write, I generally do not use the vocabulary I use on a day to day basis. It's my chance to stretch my vernacular's legs, & have a blast with the things I've come to value so much: words.

I owe this passion to my equally as affluent adoration to books. As a child, my peers thought me odd. During recess, I was the one to be sitting on the corner of the basketball court with my nose so far into a book there was little light for the pages. After school, while other kids were outside riding bicycles or whatever it was they did, I was inside. Perhaps not reading, but feeling a sense of alienation to the ones my age & opting to spend my time either alone or with my beloved grandparents. I never felt I was on the same playing field as my generation. That is, until the Britney Spears phenomena thrust itself onto our impressionable little minds & then I finally had something to discuss with the crowd at my lunch table. Despite my setbacks, I was very extroverted, had a reputation for speaking out, was known for my wit (I call it wit, my teachers called it backtalk) & always had the crowd laughing. This brought me "friends", but I never felt deeply connected with anyone at school until I was well into high school.

My dad had this saying every time I finished a book & gave him a voluntary report on it. He would say, "Reading is fundamental." Books were our one thing we had in common. I remember my quality time with him was going out on a sunday to the nearest Border's & reading the day away. He always tried to instill in me that education & knowledge were the only things that could never be taken away, & that living in a country where these were easily accessible & open wide for me to dive in, I should take full advantage & acquire as much as I possibly could of both. 

That's not to say I complied with his advice, however. More on that at a later date.

So, here I am. I'm not in college, although most agree & argue that I should be. Not for lack of ambition or anything like that. I know that I'm smart beyond my years & have so much promise & blah blah blah, but I chose to put off college out of my own accord. Why? Simply put: I haven't the slightest shadow of a clue what I want to do career wise. I have a plethora of knowledge & talents but nothing to plug them into. I'm very proud of the gifts God has given me & refuse to not use them in my work. Why don't I take general classes while I wait? I don't like to labor without a goal. I know that ultimately I want to write a book, possibly a memoir, but I'm not senile to the fact that it's hit or miss, & it's not going to maintain me later in life. Until then, I will write out my sentiments to this blog. Who knows? Maybe I'll compile all the posts & when I'm finally ready to dig in my heels & write a book, it will be half written. 

Anyway, back to the naming of this blog. When it was time to give it a title, I figured I would name it something of myself, but not so plain as just "Ashley's Blog" or something. I asked my husband to describe me in one word. He responded rather quickly with "eccentric". I was silent, for a moment, pondering this, & decided that was pretty accurate, but lacked flair to be the title. I got the britght idea to translate it to greek. Why? despite it being the root of so many words in our language, it's also half my heritage. Personal enough. So, I googled an english to greek translator & came up with this:

εκκεντρικός

Yeah, not exactly something that speaks to the masses.

I began to look for pronunciation generators. Apparently such things do not exist.

I looked up the greek alphabet & tried to write out the phonics myself. I ended with ECKNITRICKSH.

Once again, not marketable & I didn't want to possibly embarrass myself with offending someone of greek tongue coming across my blog. Greek people happen to be very proud of their language & despise when it is not used correctly. As do most people of foreign language. & domestic, in my case.

Anyway, there I was, back at square one. I entered the word in other dialects, & found myself with a lot of things I couldn't even decipher much less apply to myself. In the end, I was lost.

Get it?

So there you go. The maiden post. I look forward to keeping up this blog. I will most likely base each post of a single event I wish to elaborate on rather than drone on about random musings, which tends to elude some & annoy most at times. I hope you read again, & maybe you'll be entertained, inspired, or at the very least be able to relate.

& maybe, my being lost in translation may bring me to find myself. 

-A.A.