My Identity Crisis

Boy, have the last two years been a rollercoaster of fun. In two days, I'll hit the two-year anniversary of my sudden divorce. Four days after that, I'll hit the two-month-iversary of my almost-as-sudden new marriage. [Edit: Dang, but do I suck at dates. I was married on December 19, 2014. My 2-month-iversary isn't until February 19. I just passed my 1-month-iversary on January 19th, so what I MEANT to say is "four days ago, I celebrated my 1-month-iversary...." I need more sleep. If you all will just do the dates for me from now on, that'd be great.]

A week ago today, I said goodbye to my decade-long career as a full-time Public Defender, moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, and have embarked on a new career as a full-time sorter-of-junk-in-moving-boxes, organizer-of-junk-in-closets, and motherer-of-children-who-scatter-junk... or is that just how it seems? Part time (while the kids are in school, and trusting that the boxes will wait) I'll be a freelance writer, with some law stuff training to take care of on the horizon. *Makes note to send in bar dues, just in case*

I'm also planning to really get serious about that Become Bestselling Novelist bucket-list item I've been fiddling with for years. Because I need more red carpets in my life. (Doesn't everybody?)

At the same time that I'm trying on all these fancy new hats, I'm changing my legal name (well, theoretically--the project keeps getting buried in other minutia) to Kirkham. I'm trying to figure out how to alter my scribble of a signature to make the A in Ambrose look more like a K (mostly by writing a K over the top of the A that magically appears .2 seconds after I put pen to paper, despite my best intentions to pause after Robin). (The rest of the letters are utterly illegible anyway.) I'm getting used to introducing myself as Robin Kirkham. To answering to Mrs. Kirkham and Sister Kirham. Even my kids are getting used to my new name.

But...

Here, and elsewhere in the world where I'm a writer first and the rest of it hardly at all, I'm still Robin Ambrose. I've always loved my maiden name, and one of the silver linings of two years ago was the realization that I hadn't yet published a book under my ex-husband's name. When I go to writer's conferences with Robin Ambrose on my name tag, people think I made the name up, it's so perfect. So as much as I love and trust my new husband, Nate, I'm embracing this chance to splinter myself into separate personalities and make myself so confused that I have no idea WHO I am or WHAT IN THE WORLD I'm supposed to be doing, now. Because, fun!

6 months ago, I was a single working mother, a full-time lawyer, and a (let's face it) hobbyist writer. Starting this week, I'm a Stay-at-Home married mother, freelancer, and a serious-but-unpublished writer. The "What do you do" question just got more complicated.

Anyone else ever change just about everything about the Definition of You in one fell swoop?