Lola is me, and I am Lola. Sort of. Here’s the deal:

Fact 1: When I was a little girl, I desperately wanted a nickname. Unfortunately, my name is Laura, which doesn’t really have traditional alternatives. A Laura I was and a Laura I would stay. (I tried to be a “Laurie” for a while, but my parents were adamantly against it, probably because their best friends’ daughter was Lori.)

Fact 2: “Whatever Lola Wants” is one of my favorite songs.

For my 40th birthday, my husband put together a book of awesome things from people all about me (I call it my “Big Book of How Awesome I Am”). One of the many delightful things that my bestie wrote was that she wanted to give me a nickname, but didn’t know how I would take it. She wrote that Lola was one of the names she had considered. I immediately emailed her and told her facts 1 and 2, and thus I became Lola to her.

I really love being Lola to her, but haven’t done much to rename myself in other venues — I’m still Laura to pretty much everyone else (see update, below). But I’ve noticed since it happened that I have conversations with myself like, “I don’t know if I can pull that off…it’s not really ME. (pause) BUT, Lola would TOTALLY kill it.” And then I get it and I love it and am happy. These conversations have morphed into a kind of bedrock for me…whenever I’m feeling at loose ends, I think about what Lola would do, and I do that. And generally, it’s the right thing. Because I may not have my shit together…but Lola does.

UPDATE: Since I wrote this, I decided I wanted to be Lola more. So I’ve relaunched myself as Lola in my personal life and it is AMAZING!

I previously published patterns and blogged under the name Laura Lynch; going forwards, all that kind of work will be as Lola.