Who is Becca?

It's nearly 1am here in Hull, I'm sat in the kitchen alone, hearing the noises of a new home. The creaking of the floorboards, although strangely, nobody is moving. But in this almost silence, I'm very much deep in thought and it's thoughts I wanted to write down.

Throughout my entire 20 years and a few months on this earth, I have never liked my name being shortened. The line "It's not Becky, it's not Bec, it's Rebecca." Falling from my mouth in a very similar fashion and tone as my mother. But in recent months, I have accepted Becca as a more tolerable alternative. Predominantly because customers in Gran Canaria just defaulted to calling me Becca, why, I have no idea whatsoever. This began to become the running joke in my family, that when I'm in that wet suit I'm "Becca the Dive Master." It's suddenly got me thinking over the last few days, what's in a name? There's a lot more to Becca then Rebecca. People always used to ask me how I'm so confident in situations like public speaking or meeting new people, despite the anxiety problem. It is immensely easy to fake being confident, it's very easy to put on a mask and the more you do it, the more natural it becomes and the more you adopt it into your normal persona.

And that above, is the whole point of this blog post. I have adopted "Becca" as my persona. You see, when I was in that wet suit, when I was Becca, I had so much confidence, I could brief a full boat of people and be confident about it, I could conduct introduction dives and have a laugh and a joke whilst doing so, I could put people at ease when I was diving with them (Shout out to the Italian family I did a double tank dive with, you guys were fab!) I have noticed ore an more recently that I'm transferring a lot of the "Becca" traits into my "normal" life back on land. I stand a little taller, I'm a heck of a lot more confident and eloquent when putting new ideas to a group of people, I can now handle most situations, I can even make and receive phone calls to people I don't know, - level up!

By putting myself in a situation that I knew would be uncomfortable in the beginning, I have completely changed myself and my outlook on life. I like to believe that Becca is a cooler person *puts on shades* No? Okay... Anyway, but Becca is the person that 13 year old me always wanted to be, the girl with the nose ring, the slightly blondish hair that doesn't ever really fall right, the girl who is always planning her next adventure, the girl who will ever give up on her dreams.

To try and round off this blog post, and to allow you, dear reader, to take something from it. I want people who are scared of social situations, scared of doing that presentation in class next week, or maybe, like me, you get a little bit nervous when it comes to paying for you shopping at the till. To make a persona for yourself, it doesn't even have to have a name, just create that version of yourself that you want to be, to create the self-fulfilling prophecy. And soon you will be conducting that presentation or even talking to that cashier with more ease and confidence.

Until the next post, guys, be good and be safe.