My first time...

It truly is a constant struggle of mine to find the right screen name. I was part of THAT generation; the ones who started growing up online which came with its own struggles including creating a one-word masterpiece that would be the envy of all your friends. Something that would draw the crowds in on forums and make them listen to your words of wisdom.

My masterpiece? Mycatpro36nato. If it had one thing going for it it would be the originality, but certainly not cool in any way, shape or indeed form (although I think I would still struggle coming up with something today, giving Facebook and Google's insistence on using actual names). But at 13, my online existence was less about being cool and more about hiding my online identity from the prying parent eyes. Not that I was doing anything awful, but teenagers need their space and the internet boom in the 00's was the perfect place to get lost in MySpace, Bebo and all manner of chatrooms.The name comes from a blog post I read about finding the perfect screen name. It suggested you use numbers and things you would remember in a cool strand, but limited to 2 or three things, like TunaDog94 for example. The examples they used was a perfect template for creating my own, I thought, and with that I crafted the most obscure and ridiculous screen name by cramming 5 different inspirations into one. Sure if was memorable, and of course my parents did not suspect a thing.

I still remember the name with great ease, although it is now most definitely defunct. I was young, dumb and weird enough to come up with something like that, but in today”s world where branding is so important to both online and offline life, sticking with Jordan-Lee seems a better option for now.