I invented Pollyanna dot Sunshine at gmail dot com as an alternate email account when I wanted to register for some sites I didn’t want mixed up with my existing online alterego, for reasons that I have now mostly forgotten, and I began using it some more to send some emails that I didn’t want my employers to have instantaneous access to (you know, about my plans for the upcoming revolution, and my porn addiction.  Just kidding, guys, I am the most faithful employee who ever lived, and think porn is gross, and kinda boring.  Go team!)  Then I started using it to relocate a huge flood of personal email that was threatening to overload my work email account and take over my life.  And my correspondents dug the name, and started embellishing it and mixing it up with my real name, and Pollyanna.Sunshine sort of took on a life of her own.

Anyway, somebody told me it sounded “Southern” and I felt I needed to set the record straight for those not experts in early 20th century children’s lit.  (Although how anyone could have missed all the movie versions I have no idea.  They only recently did a very nice adaptation on PBS.)  So here’s what I told them:

Note on my new cyberidentity:  Although you may recall me as the girl voted Most Likely to Follow in the Footsteps of Sylvia Plath … you will be either delighted or horrified to learn (or perhaps recall) that I also have a strong streak of anti-Plathism that has (with the help of various other philosophical and pharmaceutical advantages), enabled me to outlast Sylvia by more than 5 years.  The name of my secret superhero alterego is derived from a classic work of early 20th C American literature, Eleanor H. Porter’s 1913 novel, Pollyanna, and its numerous sequels, aptly summarized by the fine folks at Wikipedia:

Pollyanna tells the story of Pollyanna Whittier, a young girl who goes to live with her wealthy Aunt Polly after her father’s death. Pollyanna’s philosophy of life centers around what she calls “The Glad Game”: she always tries to find something to be glad about in every situation, and to always do without delay whatever she thinks is right. With this philosophy, and her own sunny personality, she brings so much gladness to her aunt’s dispirited New England town that she transforms it into a pleasant, healthy place to live. Eventually, however, even Pollyanna’s robust optimism is put to the test when she loses the use of her legs in an accident.

Despite mixed perceptions of its literary merit, Pollyanna has proved to be both enduringly popular and, in unexpected ways, influential.  Through the success of the book, the term “pollyanna” (along with the adjective “pollyannaish” and the noun “Pollyannaism”) entered the language to describe someone who is cheerfully optimistic and who maintains a generous attitude toward the motives of other people. It then became by extension (and contrary to the spirit of the book) a derogatory term for a naïve optimist who always expects people to act decently, despite strong evidence to the contrary.

The word “pollyanna” may also denote a holiday gift exchange more typically known as Secret Santa.

The last name I just came up with off the top of my head because somebody else had already bogarted Pollyanna at gmail and most of the other combos I could think of.  But I think it is appropriate, and adds to the cheerfulness of my moniker with a touch of 1960s Berkeley which I think suits me quite nicely.  The (dot) in my name indicates that I am not in fact doing a straight imitation of the original Pollyanna but am in fact an entirely postmodern hybrid cyberidentity that is simultaneously sincerely sweet and deeply ironic about it.

Welcome to my world.  My mission is to spread gladness and irony to all who enter here, while piling up huge stocks of good karma for myself, because I have always been quite a believer in karma, and a little bit greedy.