The history of this blog's title.

Welcome, one and all, first-time readers and returning admirers. For some reason or another, you've stumbled upon the blog of Bree Brouwer, a blog that used to be titled "Princess Bree." Obviously, my title has changed for the better.

Why? One: my junior high/high school nickname was Princess, and that's just ridiculously in the past at this point. Two: I'm married now, and several of my friends have pointed out that I'm technically a queen rather than a princes ("Queen Bree" was been recommended to me as a possible blog title, which I have to admit I seriously considered for a while...). Three: I've changed; I am no longer the exact same person I was when Princess Bree was all the rage.

This all crossed my mind not five months after I had created my Princess Bree blogs at blogger.com and wordpress.com. And after I had already posted a few blogs here and there over those five months. Go figure.

So what to do, my mind wondered. I wanted a new blog, something that encompassed every aspect of my life and described my entire being. That was the one thing I was certain of. However, I was not certain of a title. "Princess Bree" was certainly not a creative title, but it had suited my purpose at the time of its use. I needed something for now, to suit my purpose at this time in my life and hopefully for the next several years of my life, so I wouldn't have to go through this re-thinking and re-blogging process all over again.

Next came a lengthy, intense analysis of several blog title ideas and a final evaluation of a few favorites. And by lengthy I mean about an hour or two's worth of sitting on a couch in the coffee house with my laptop on my knees, picking apart every single title option and narrowing down why it would or would not work because of its possible connotations, denotations, and eventually inevitable descriptions of myself. Oh, the joy (or curse) of being an English major.

Suddenly, I remembered something my boss had once told me a few summers ago, when I was a secretary and receptionist at a reading clinic in Arizona. I had just finished several projects she'd given me, and apparently that impressed her, as she mentioned that I was "just a little Girl Friday" getting all this work done. (If you don't know what a Girl Friday is, you should look up a definition now, or the rest of this may not make much sense.) After this memory, I then realized my favorite character off the TV show Smallville, Chloe Sullivan, was often referred to by fans as a Girl Friday, as well, and a few fan websites of Miss Sullivan (or of the actress who plays her, Allison Mack) were even titled "Girl Friday." Chloe Sullivan kicks ass, and she is a reporter just like I am/was, and she has awesome short hair I tend to copy, and my husband thought she was the hottest woman on that show, and when my husband met me he thought, "She is as kick-ass as Chloe, and she even looks like her!"

Well, that finalized it. I just had to have my blog title be Girl Friday, or something of that nature.

So I try signing up on blogger.com as "girlfriday." I should've known it was oh-so-generic that of course someone had taken it already. I searched for a definition of "girl friday" through Google, to see if any of the results would lead me to a more creative version of the idiom. Thank goodness for Wikipedia; whatever would we do without it? That continually questioned source of information for scholarly papers and academic work pulled through in this situation, which was thankfully neither scholarly nor academic. The site explained that some people in this day and age tend to see the idiom "Girl Friday" as sexually demeaning, and so they have changed it to "Woman Friday" (although "Girl Friday" is still apparently an accepted idiom in Britain).

I'm not a raging feminist, but I could see these protestors' point. And I realized that I am indeed no longer a girl; I have in many aspects matured to a point far beyond girl-hood. I don't mind being called a girl on occasion, in a group of friends, or as an affectionate term from loved ones, but in reality, I have become a woman. I have become a woman who loves her husband, who leads, who volunteers, who does the job, who helps others, who does so much that sometimes she stresses out so terribly that it's probably cut a year or two off her life expectancy.

"Woman Friday" sounded wonderful to me. It described me. It was me. My friend Jess sitting next to me on the couch in the coffee shop happened to agree. I suppose that was the added and final blessing on my decision.

Blogger.com had the name "womanfriday" available, so I signed up with it, and here I am. I do not know if I will import my few posts from my old blog, and I'm not necessarily sure I want to. I am trying to start over, trying to write more and develop myself as an observer and producer of language. I'm usually pretty humble, and this first post may be a bit ridiculous, but I do believe that I am off to a good start with my goal.