I have been inching towards some contracting work. Of course, nothing is ever guaranteed and in many ways I’m five steps ahead of myself here, but ultimately, all things being equal, my end game in this adventure is to start doing this kind of thing on the regular and actually get paid for it.

I’ve officially taken a stab, and its an optimistic one, but if I’m being honest wih myself not even really a favourable one.

That said, my guide on this adventure did politely inform me that if things proceeded to the next step I would need to do something much more than personal introspection: I would need to set up a business. Legit. Corporate registry, tax account number, bank account, government filing documents, legit.

Not a big deal. It’s just time and money and effort. I can handle it.

But what’s got me hung up is that when I do all that legit business stuff, I actually need to call myself something. I can’t just hang an Inc off my name and go from there. I need a business name.

I wouldn’t say that I’ve been good at naming stuff, but I’ve certainly been prolific. I have registered dozens of domain names over the years and let nearly as many lapse, each a little project or business idea that I threw against the wall hoping it would stick. I have created funny and clever handles for social media accounts. I have given myself an artistic pen name and am currently writing a video game under a clever (and unregistered) studio name, though neither of those really encompass the tone of professionalism that I would hope to impart with a corporate registration name that someone would need to put on an invoice, you know?

And is my way, I tend to trudge along with the bigger plan, ever forward, even while swatting at the air as it buzzes around me with these pesky little problems that need solving.

What’s in a name? Everything, in many ways. 

All those previous names I have mentioned were chosen to impart a sense of casual disconnectedness from my professional self, as odd as that might seem. I wanted to add a jagged edge to my art when I called myself “squwetchy” online for that. I used the name “pixelazy” for my photography for a while throwing a broad tone of just-a-guy-with-a-camera snapping photos into the digital ecosphere. My online coder-guy presense has always been wrapped in this very domain name “8r4d” a kind of throwback to the geekily trend of numeric hacker lingo that I secured in a domain name nearly a quarter century ago now. All of them are little slivers of me, but none are my professional self, and none of them convey a kind of marketable trust that even I would look at and go “let’s hire them…”

So I have entered the realm of needing to tangle myself up with a very official, very long term, corporate identity. And I find myself thinking I may need to do that sooner than later. Even inching towards something might get you there eventually, right?