It’s a bit after the fact, I know, but I’ve been thinking you might like to know the origin of my blog name. I also thought I’d throw in the origin of my Instagram and Tumblr* names (the same as each other) just for fun.

Before the blog, there was Instagram, and before that there was Amos…

How Amos got his name.

Instagram was my very first social media forum, even before my Facebook page–which I have recently deactivated. When I set up the Instagram account and had to choose a name, I decided to purloin a name I’d been using as the trade name for the jewellery I made and sold in the local gallery–Amos the Magic Dog…or in Instagram-speak, @amosthemagicdog. There is nothing brief about it, which flies in the face of most marketing strategies except, it seems, that it is memorable.

Amos-the-magic-dog was really Storm-the-rescue-dog. We adopted him when he was about 10 months old from the local animal shelter. He was part Blue Heeler (cattle dog) and the vet thought perhaps part Corgi as well, but who knows! He was sweet and smart as anything and lived to the ripe old age of 18 years, 17+ of them with us. When he was about midway through his life, my parents came to Australia to visit us. They stayed for several weeks. Dad and I would go for walks in the mornings and Storm would come with us. We walked on the golf course, which at that time of the morning had few golfers, so Storm could have a run off the leash. Storm would be very busy sniffing and peeing and trying to herd the rabbits and birds (Blue Heeler instinct at work) and Dad would look around and wonder where he had disappeared, but for some reason he couldn’t remember Storm’s name. One morning he asked ‘Where is Amos-the-magic-dog?’ It tickled me so much, the name stuck in my head. Dad’s family had a habit of making up names, the product of their ‘humour gene’. The classic was the woman up the street that my Grandfather called ‘Porch Swing’, because he would always see her sitting in a swing on her front porch. Everyone knew who he was talking about when he said it, and I knew who Dad was talking about when he asked about Amos.

So, when I wanted a cute, funky name for the jewellery I made, Amos the Magic Dog came to mind. The tags even included a photo of Storm, aka Amos. And when I opened my Instagram account I became ‘amosthemagicdog’. I attended an Instameet with other Instagrammers earlier this year, and I introduced myself as amosthemagicdog, and the other contributors immediately knew who I was, er rather, recognised the name.

The blog name.

I thought I might want to write about more serious matters when I started the blog, so I decided the Amos name might not be quite the right vibe. I started playing around with various names but nothing quite worked, mostly because they were already being used by someone else. So, thought I, no one else will be named Ardys, certainly that should work. But it didn’t! And a couple of years ago a woman named Ardys actually contacted me, having found my blog. Mystery solved. There are a few of us out there! And then I tried adding my initials, becoming ardys-e-z. I realised that minus the hyphens it would either sound like ‘ardys easy'(hmmm…) or ‘ardys-says’ when people read it. Being an optimist, ardysez was registered. Not as creative as it could have been, perhaps, and slightly confusing as it turned out, due to the unusual nature of my name, but not having any better ideas that were immediately able to be registered, it remained. Then a friend gave me a lovely birthday card in which she had copied the following anonymous passage:

There is that which has always been there,

Which has never left your side,

Which has always been present,

Whatever the feeling, the circumstance.

When you turn your attention to trusting that,

You surrender to yourself.

That really said it all to me; what my life and writing was trying to be about. And so the byline for ardysez became ‘surrender to yourself’. I think of the longer version above when I read the byline, and thought you might like to know it too, so that it may give you some context in which to read my various writings.

Wishing you a happy and healthy week.

(I had intended to add another photo and a new feature to this post before publishing today, but for two days our internet and/or WordPress has been very difficult for uploads, so it will wait for another time.)

(*Tumblr is another blogging format. I have not explored it as much as I have WordPress, and I use it mostly to reblog my WordPress posts, and Instagram photos.)