The story behind my email address...

     This is a blog post that I have been wanting to write for over a year! The idea has been saved in my "blog posts for rainy days" section of both my brain and my blog planner. I have a few larger posts that I am currently drafting for the coming weeks (including a new travel guide post and some room tours for my new apartment!), but while those posts are in progress I still wanted to have something up for y'all today. Two of my favorite fashion bloggers, Katey McFarlan and Haley Shepard, both published posts this week which discussed more of the behind-the-scenes aspects of blogging. Both of these women are full-time bloggers, and I was just in awe after reading their posts at how dedicated they are to creating amazing content and running their businesses! Katey's post especially stressed the importance of consistency in blog content. Since the larger posts that I'm working on won't be ready just yet, today seemed like the perfect day to share this post idea that's been floating around for awhile!

      Having active social media accounts is a huge part of being a blogger. I use Instagram and Snapchat the most frequently, and my username on these accounts is @miss_alk. (This is also the name that I sign all of my blog posts with... for an explanation behind that, see this blog post!) My Pinterest username is also @miss_alk. Some of you might have noticed though that both my Twitter account and my blog's email address are @rainbowflash94/rainbowflash94@yahoo.com... say what? That is definitely not related to @miss_alk, or to my blog's name! There is definitely a story behind the rainbowflash94, and without further ado, here it is:



     In Winter 2004, I was 10 years old, and desperately trying to think of the *coolest* email address possible. For a 10 year old girl in the early 2000s, having a basic email address with just my name simply wasn't an option! (Y'all remember the days and know what types of email address I'm talking about!) My passions at this time in my life were figure skating, dancing, and reading, but I couldn't think of anything that was cool enough, sounded right, or wasn't already taken, that could incorporate these things that I liked.


     Then my mom thought of the perfect idea, "rainbow flash". Here is where the name comes from: a few days after I was born when my parents were bringing me home from the hospital, back in Maine in September 1994, during my very first car ride my mom saw a rainbow and a flash of lightening collide. She said it was a scene that she will never forget! (Years later, she saw a photography piece by a Maine artist who had seen the same sight that day and was able to capture it on camera!)


    I thought that rainbowflash was perfect, and I added the number 94, for my birth year, to the end of it. Hence my very first email address!


      What differs this email from many of the those in the early 2000s though is that I've never stopped using it. My inbox today has over 35,000 emails. Yes, 35,000! This email address has been with me through everything: middle school, high school and college! It's received some of the best and worst messages of my life. One of the funniest things to think about are the countless emails that I used to send with my middle school crush since this was before I had a Facebook account... technically those emails are all still buried in there somewhere!



      I've been lucky enough to never experience any sort of major email hack in the 12 years that I've had the account, so I never saw a need to stop using it. When I had my personal writing blog in high school, I developed a separate gmail account for that blog. It started becoming more of a chore to check a second email account though, so when I started this blog a few years ago I knew that I wanted to launch it under my personal email. Yes, it's true that my email account for this blog might not end with @southernbelleintraining.com, or have my blog's name in the title. But the story behind the name means a lot to me, and what means even more to me is how long it has been with me for!  I started my Twitter account when I was in high school, way before this blog was created, so my Twitter was made under the name @rainbowflash94. When I started other social media accounts in college after my blog was created, it made more sense to use @miss_alk since that is the name that I signed my blog posts with, and it's a lot shorter!



     So there is your random post from me for the week! :-) Do any of you still use your childhood email addresses?


     Stay tuned next week for lots of new posts, and this weekend I'll try and put a post together with some 4th of July sale deals! Have a great holiday weekend everyone!



     xoxo Miss ALK