What’s up with that moniker, wise-guy?
Well, it’s like this…
Over the last couple of years, Faltarego has gone from being a simple alias to kind of taking on a life of its own.
It all started back in the winter of 2004. I was going through one of my dark, depressive periods (oh, what fragile creatures we artists be) and systematically extricating myself from all manner of activities and projects. Things get a bit overwhelming when I get into one of these deep funks (which thankfully don’t come round all that often), and scaling back on things seems to be the only solution that works for me.
(Note: I’m not going to be writing about my depression on this blog. I’m going to save that for my personal blog.)
For some reason or other, in the midst of the darkness of brain, I began to think about how ego-based we are, and how much of what we do is for recognition and praise. I wondered, idly, what it would be like to do creative work anonymously, without expectation of reward or acclaim.
The first thing to do was create an alias for myself, one that had nothing to do with my identity, location, gender, age, or hair color. I knew I wanted to incorporate the word ego into it—I was, after all, experimenting with the whole concept of the ego—but beyond that, I wasn’t sure what I wanted.
Then I began to think about the fact that I was creating an alternate identity—an alter ego, if you will. With that thought, the road became suddenly and clearly illuminated. I was creating an alter ego that was really an anti-ego. It didn’t take too much longer for the word "falter" to appear in my head. The notion of stumbling was perfect.
But I hit a snag. I was using Yahoo for email at the time, and the handle "falterego" was already taken. Fortunately, I didn’t have to go right back to square one. I just fiddled with it a bit and eventually changed the "e" in "falter" to an "a", resulting in "faltarego". The name was available, and the change in spelling magically added another level of meaning: Faltering at the altar of the ego.
Or something like that.
And just who the heck are you, anyway?
Who am I? You mean the person behind the moniker?
Well, I’m not exactly going to make a secret of my real identity, but there are plenty of other sites where I have an account that you can see more detail about the real person. I’m just not going to make that a main focus of what I do here. I’m not striving for anonymity, or anything like that, but I’m not going to get into the ins and outs of my personality or habitat, either.
I’m setting up this site so I can write about things that inspire me, things I know something about, and things that I’m good at. I’m not getting into shameless self-promotion or self-aggrandizement. I just want to express myself and make it available for other people to read.
If you like it, great. If you don’t, well… There are plenty of other blogs out there.
I’d like to think that I’m a skilled enough writer with enough passion about certain topics that I can make an impression, make someone think, or give someone a chuckle. That’s all I really want to do. My identity is irrelevant to that. I just want to do the creative work and send it out there.
I’m actually struggling with this whole concept of the ego. I created this alias for myself back in 2004, but I never really ended up using it for the purpose I had originally intended for it. It seemed that every time I’d use it as a login on a website, I’d add my personal information to the profile, almost without thinking about it. I believe Wikipedia was the only exception to that.
Then came Protagonize. My activity on that site (which has not been trivial by any stretch) has firmly cemented "Faltarego" as my alternate identity, and folks on that site know me both my that handle and by my real name. It’s carried over to Gmail, Twitter, and several other writing websites.
So, naturally, when it came time for me to think about my own website and blogging about the things I love, "Faltarego" was the natural—perhaps only—choice for a domain name.
It’s becoming my online identity.
I even created a logo for it.
So that, as they say, is that.
