Hey all! So for a little backstory, I came to terms with myself being trans back in 2010, and as I had a username ending in 'Vin' - a lot of people called me forms of Vin, Vinnie, etc. Cause of that, I decided on going by the name Vince because, personally I didn't mind the name and people said it fit me, plus it makes it easier on those who already called me Vin.
Fast forward to 2018, I'm beginning HRT and being called Vince by most people who know about me, though some online friends just call me Mikau which is the online name I've went by for years now. Though I realized legal name chances will happen sooner or later (since I really dislike seeing my deadname on documents and such) and then I began getting kind of conflicted since, of course, I'm going to be changing and also since several years have passed and I've aged more.
Dont get me wrong, I don't dislike the name people call me right now, but I also chose that years ago simply based off of a username. It's like an internal war of "Do I want to be called this by strangers and in a professional setting?" and "Do I want this? Do I prefer something else? How does this make me feel?" because I do have other name ideas, but the names I like are also names of people I already know (Couple examples are Zack/Zachary and Isaac.) so it just feels... awkward? I've lived in a small area all my life so people having the same name is a bit weird for me, even for super common names, which doesn't really help my case. In a few communities, people have called me Zack and it made me feel great, but two of my friends are named Zach and Zak. I was considering just making Vince/Vincent my middle name instead (Kind of like Zachary Vincent [LastName]?) so that people who are more comfortable calling me Vince still can, but I'm not entirely confident with the whole sharing names with a friend thing... feels kind of like stealing, you know?
It also seems kind of like a burden or weird for those who have called me Vince for almost 10 years, asking them to call me by a different name like I did when I first came out...
Does anyone else have this kind of problem and what did you do to fix it or cheer yourself up?