If you are here, you might be wondering, where does the name Kameleon Journal comes from. I use it as my brand and across all my social media profile. It originally started as Chameleon Journal, but in 2023 I updated the spelling (mainly for efficiency to save 1 character, because Kameleon Journal without a space fits 15 characters that social media handles often require) but also because the spelling with K felt more representative of my last name 'Kis-Herczegh' (which btw is Hungarian and means 'Little-Prince'). Back to the topic.
First of all, I always wanted to have a brand name, something that represents me, that's unique and easy to remember me by. Within the industry people often use something related to their profession and while I am an SEO at heart, I am also many other things. I started out in hospitality and worked as a cocktail bartender for many years. I also worked as a conference organiser, and I am now a Solution Consultant, with a background in SaaS. But that's not the end of it. I'm also a certified yoga teacher and a neuroscience student, currently pursuing my second master's degree. I have many passions and skills so I wanted to find something that best describes who I am, rather than what I do. And this is how we got there, instead of using my own name, which often gets mispronounced, since 2015 I continuously opted to pick a more abstract name for my personal accounts and projects. As I started to use it more often, it also started to develop a deeper meaning for me and became more of an idea of who I am.
The original name 'chameleon journal' or now 'kameleon journal' is close to my heart. When I moved to the UK in 2014, I had to leave behind everything I knew before and start completely over. Friends, family, my career, my cat, my native language. I wasn't completely alone when I arrived but it was still a very lonely life to start with. My friends got me a chameleon plushie and as childish as it might seem, that plushie started to represent some of 'home' to me. I started taking Pascal, the chameleon with me everywhere I went and travelled. I literally had to take backpacks everywhere, just to take this fella with me. It became a thing, so it quickly manifested itself in my social media accounts, which I mainly used to show off the places I travelled to with this little green fella.
But there are some other meanings to this name as well. I always found chameleons to be fascinating creatures. The one thing pretty much everyone knows about chameleons is that they can change their skin colour in reaction to their environment. But a less known fact is that they also change their colour to communicate their mood. A neutral green chameleon would blend into their environment, while an excited or submissive chameleon can display a variety of different colours. Anyone, who experienced a big change in their life that includes breaking out of a usual cadence or environment - like moving to a new country, breaking up a long-term relationship, leaving behind a job and changing careers, and so on - would be familiar with what I call 'the chameleon lifestyle'. We learn, we adapt, and we change.
When you change your environment completely , you have to react to that change and it helps you explore completely new aspects of yourself.
See, I feel like we might all, but I - for sure - have the spirit of a chameleon. Learning to show my colours, and with every change and every new environment, discover more and more of my personality. I think what's beautiful about this, is that I don't have to think of myself as just one thing. We are complex, colourful human beings who grow and develop through change.
So Kameleon Journal is my lens and my personal experience of the world. Its consistency lies in it being inconsistent, ever-changing, ever-moving and adapting. And all of its colours and aspects are true and real.