Chris Breva

Chris Breva  (E) An essay about myself for the "Write an Essay about" Contest, February 2020 #2214024 by Chris Breva

Round 1 Prompt:

Write an essay about YOU!


Use the five paragraph format to give us a glimpse into who you are.


All entries must follow this outline:

Title
I. Introduction
II. First Keypoint
III. Second Keypoint
IV. Third Keypoint
V. Conclusion

Word Count must be 500-1000 Words

I am probably one of the few people you will ever meet who has two legal names as well as a business name that the government identifies me by. I have two names because I am a writer and my writing career gave me the pseudonym. Like Mark Twain I knew early in life that I wanted to be a writer, but I was much too shy to deal with the public. It was easy to hide behind a keyboard, but the idea of having to deal with the public made my skin crawl when I was a child. In my mind just being a writer was an automatic ticket to fame and fortune and I pursued that career with a passion for many years. I have since come to realize that like anything else, being a writer means you have to have money to invest in your career just like anything else does. I published four books, which went absolutely nowhere due to my not having the money for a publicist to sell them. So I became disillusioned and changed careers later in life.

Now you are probably wondering how that came to mean I have two names. Well that in itself is a story but I met a hustler one day who wanted something from me. I went on to have a romantic relationship with this hustler and it twisted me in every direction. During the relationship it was suggested to me that I needed a pseudonym if I was to be a writer. The hustler was a lawyer and knew that a bank was a federal institution. If a bank recognizes a name as legal then the government recognizes the name. The hustler suggested opening a bank account and putting it in my name and adding "AKA Jamison Christian Breva".

I did so and the name stuck. I later went to federal court on another legal civil matter and the judge asked me if I had ever used "Jamison Christian "Chris" Breva as an alias. I told him I had indeed and that it was my pseudonym. He said "No sir. That is now your second legal name because the bank recognized it."

I then went into the magazine business for a short period of time and used the company name "Mid-Ohio Valley Poetry." The US Government recognized that as a legal name when I applied for an employer identification number. I had big dreams. I was going to publish a nationwide magazine employing many writers. Of course the money issue came back to bite me again and I ended the company.

The long and short of it is that the US Government knows me as Marvin Duane Schrebe AKA Jamison Christian Breva DBA (doing business as) Mid-Ohio Valley Poetry.

Try signing all of that as your signature!