CLOUDEEBLUE

Okay, first things first – I will answer the inevitable question about the origin of the name “CLOUDEEBLUE.” Several years ago, shortly after getting my first computer, I had to come up with a name to use for my email address. My real name was “already in use,” so I started thinking about things that I like, things that mean something to me or say something about how I feel. As my mind drifted, I imagined myself lying in a lovely green field on the side of some unnamed hill somewhere, gazing up into the sky, feeling that all was right with the world. I watched as soft, marshmallowy clouds drifted by in a sky of dazzling blue, and I was filled with a sense of peace and wonder. “That’s it!” I thought. So I typed in “cloudyblue” as my choice for an email name, and, alas, it was “already in use” just like my actual name! Not to be dissuaded, however, I thought maybe I could get the name if I varied the spelling a bit.

Now, let me stop here and say that, as a wordsmith and a worshipper of language, one of my pet peeves is cutesy misspellings of common words, like “Krab Fest” or “Lazy Daze Sale” (although that last one could arguably be a well-placed double entendre). So the thought of doing precisely that with my own email name was something I wasn’t quite sure about. But I really loved the feeling of warmth and serenity that accompanied my imagined foray into that hillside scene, so I hesitantly typed in “CLOUDEEBLUE” and, lo and behold, that name was available!

I pushed the button to accept, and from that moment on, I have been using the moniker as my email name. Every time I’m in a store and see those blue pajamas with clouds floating on them, I smile. (I never got any of them, though, and I’m not sure why – maybe that’s a good thing for my next Christmas wish list!) And once, I even found a mouse pad with that scene on it, and I was near delirious!

So when it came time to pick a name for a blog, I naturally gravitated to CLOUDEEBLUE. The picture at the top of this page is not EXACTLY like the puffy-cloud-adorned blue sky from my meditation that first day, but it is a photo I took myself, from one of my favorite locations on earth – a beautiful, chalet-style cabin on the side of a mountain in Oregon – and it very much gave me the same wondrous “cloudeeblue” feeling.

As to what this blog will be, that’s something I’ve been contemplating for awhile now. I decided that I will write about the things that matter most in life – at least in my life – and always with the goal of following that “cloudeeblue” sense of deep-down inner calm and joy. You see, “cloudeeblue” isn’t an exuberant, loud joy; rather, it’s a quiet, all-too-easy-to-miss feeling, but a very important feeling, nonetheless. It’s important to find the sacred in the ordinary; the magic in the mundane; the “cloudeeblue” in the normal. It’s there. It’s always there. Sometimes you just have to look for it, and sometimes you have to look real hard. But it’s so worth it when you do. Let’s look together and celebrate what we find!