By Any Other Name

We’re heading into year SIXTEEN, so I guess it’s about time I cleared this up.

It’s a whole story, but here are the bullet points:

• My given name is Laura, with an A.
• There were many, many other Lauras born in the second half of the 20th century until the early 1990s when the Jessicas, Ashleys, and Emilys took over.

  

• Being the “creative type”, I decided to change the spelling of my name when I was 19 to Laure… with an “e”. It was different, and I wanted to be different.
• And so it was for 15 years.
• Then… I moved back to my hometown in 2015, and everyone here still knew me as Laura with an “a”. So I started going by both names.
  

I’ve been called Laura, Laure, Lara, Lora, Laurie, Lori, Lauren, Laurel, and any other name beginning with LA (including Lawrence and Larry), so you—my clients both old and new—may continue thinking of me and referring to me as whatever name feels right to you. I’ll answer to anything within reason and still smell just as sweet.

I’m going to begin signing off as Laura with an “a” now, because it’s time to leave my teenage identity crisis in the past along with my twenties and thirties.

I’ve just turned 40, and it’s time.

(I have no plans to remove my nose ring at this point, so I suppose I’ll revisit that in a decade when I turn 50.)