I've noticed that in the last couple of months people I know are increasingly calling me Beth. It does not happen a whole lot but when it does it's always a bit of a shock to me. To me, Beth and bethie are two different people almost, like Beth is my vanilla alter ego. People who know me always inevitably end up calling me bethie. Even in my work place where I'm most often called Beth, there are a couple of people who now call me bethie sometimes. Even my boss called me bethie the other day!

What's in a name you ask? Well three things.

1) Since the workplace is where people usually call me Beth I tend to think of that as my Work Face or Work Persona since work is really the only aspect of my life where I feel like I'm greatly limited in my ability to be myself. So to me hearing or reading Beth has work connotations with all the stress and grumpa frumpa that goes along with it.

2) bethie is the name that Daddy gave me at our collaring ceremony and for that more so than any other reason I consider bethie to be my real name. It's not an ageplay thing for me as much as it is a respectful acknowledgement of my inner self. I believe that who I am now as bethie is not the person I was as Beth. There are a lot of factors in my life that have changed since being with my Daddy and honoring that I am a new person with a taking new name was important to me.

3) Most importantly I do not like the name Beth because it's the name my family gave me for suspect reasons. It's a long story and one I prefer not to go into, but the short version is that my father's side of the family is a religious cult and most likely the name came from them and has specific religious implicatons within the cult. I've thought of changing my name entirely for that reason, but bethie works for me on a regular basis (see #2).

There are people that I don't know all that well that seem uncomfy calling me bethie and that's fine. I'm not going to force my preferences on anyone. But all of my close friends call me bethie and it's a shocker and not pleasent when they don't. I notice that people do this when I'm having a more serious conversation with them and they probably think that use of a nickname in those situations is not appropriate. They are right. What they are missing is that bethie is not my nickname, it's my name. It's who I am now because I've chosen to be and the name my Daddy gave to me.

So yes, long blog, appologies for that, the point is please if you are a friend of mine please try your best to remember to call me bethie because that makes me so so happy! Ok thanks!