On Usernames and Sabbatical
So, Patrick Rhone has challenged folks to post the story of their username. Here’s mine.
It was the summer of 2005. I was 22, and had just been nominated as the federal candidate for the Green Party of Canada for the Brant riding. It looked like an election was going to be called in the coming months. Media coverage and local organizing were picking up a strong hum, and I was getting nervous.
I was coming off an exhausting year of grassroots advocacy and activism with the small Students for Good Governance / Unis pour une saine gestion movement, where we’d finally managed to impeach the president of the Glendon College Students Union, start a criminal investigation on fraud and embezzlement charges, and elect a slate of transparency-minded council members.
I’d also just had a less-than-great run with my then girlfriend. (Now, my wife.)
In short, I needed a break.
At that point, I was playing in a band called The False Heroics, and had started up a music forum where independent Canadian musicians could discuss how personal faith could intersect with their art. For me, the forums were a kind of support group. Having a Christian faith of any kind as a local musician was likely to get you lumped in with the embarrassingly derivative “Christian rock” coming out of the US. (My worst nightmare.)
We’d gather online, sing “Kumbaya”, and discuss politics, metaphysics, theology, and what brand of guitar strings to buy. I gained relationships with some wonderful people as a result of those forums. I really shouldn’t mention any names.
My avatar at the time was Prime Minister Jean Chretien’s head superimposed on the body of the well-known captain of the Autobots. My username? “Optimus Prime Minister”, of course.
I was the fearless, feckless leader. (Tongue firmly in cheek.)
But then, I left.
I headed to the Gaspésie of eastern Quebec, to the tiny town of Trois Pistoles, perched on the edge of the Saint Lawrence Seaway. Mountains, whales, waterfalls, and poutine. Lots of poutine.
I spent a few weeks immersed in the French language, billing it as a last-ditch attempt to augment the lingual skills required by Glendon College, where I was half-way through a specialized bilingual degree. But really, it was more than a little motivated by my need to escape for a while.
Not wanting to be bothered by user requests on that forum I was running, I changed my username to “sabbatical!”. It was to serve as a pre-emptive reminder that I wasn’t going to answer private messages or respond to threads.
I never changed it back. Bit by bit, I started using “sabbatical” as my username nearly everywhere on the web. I even use it as my musical moniker.
I keep it to remind myself that I need to stop and breathe. The practice of sabbatical — of “sabbath”, pause, reflection, and rest — is vital to personal health, and I’m all too quick to abandon it, if I let myself. It’s a constant call to maintain balance.
So now, I’m permanently on “sabbatical”.
