I blog for myself

I'd like to say that I start blogging for Lesley. For the past couple of months we were hooked on reading Jennifer's blog every day, then Jennifer decided to pay her parents a surprise visit and Lesley went on blog withdrawal. While Jennifer is very generous to let others peek into her life and share her thoughts, I find her utterly inspiring. Here is someone so comfortable being her, so confident about what she thinks about the world and all, it's a breath of fresh air from all the political correctness abound.

In college my motto was -- Walk you own path, let others say what they please. Today when I'm supposed to be older and wiser, I no longer feel the courage to do so. So, just for the record, I blog for myself.

Recently my therapist told me that I have some co-dependency issues and that I need to find myself. As a wife and working mother, "myself" is about as far down the priority list as dusting and dental appointment.

As a Chinese living what seems like half my lifetime as a different person, "myself" was left in the old country when all of a sudden I was on Hong Kong side of the border en route to America.

About the name, I was English major in college in China and as a tradition every English student adopted an English name -- you don't expect an American professor to remember 20 Chinese names, we all look alike which is troublesome enough. Vivian is one of the characters in Sidney Sheldon's novel Bloodline. I like the sound of the name, didn't care much about anything else to it. Interestingly enough, in the book the character’s husband is named Alec. Later on when my mom decided to choose an English name for my brother, he became Alec. When I came to this country after college, the nice lady at DMV advised me that it'd be easier for everyone if I could just put my English name as first name, Chinese name as middle name, like most Chinese do when they arrive here, so that's what I did. Two short years later I got married and adopted a new last name. I, the Chinese girl, completely vanished.