inked

So I have a tattoo just to the right of my left shoulder blade. It's a small chinese character for joy. Or at least that's what it was supposed to be.

I confess that I didn't put any thought into it. In fact, I hadn't even planned on getting it.

 After 3 days of pouring rain on a family vacation in the maritimes, and being bored to the point of tears in a tiny cottage in the middle of nowhere, my sister and I found a touristy tattoo shop. It was doing a crazy amount of business alongside shops that sold maritime collectable spoons and snowglobes.

She was the one that convinced my mom to let her get a tattoo. She was only 14 at time so she needed my mother's permission.
She chose Chinese symbols for angel and heaven if memory serves.  Originally, she was going to get three done, but after seeing the first two she decided that three would be too many.  Enter older sister.

My sister has always been far more avant-garde than I could ever hope to be.

And that's how she suckered me into getting one too.  One accusation of being a goody-goody and never having done anything spur of the moment or daring, and I was choosing a symbol from a huge binder full of Chinese symbols. 10 minutes later, the deed was done.
Unlike the tourists purchasing over-priced fudge and playing cards with lighthouses on them, my tourist purchase would last a lifetime.

I can't say that I regretted it.  In the years following I liked it.  Somehow, it was the symbol that I could do things at the spur of the moment with a little encouragement, and that it was a side of myself not every one (myself included) knew about or expected

When I got home from vacation, my best friend in the wise words of Bart Simpson, "had a cow".
I didn't think I had been openly critical of tattoos or the people who branded themselves with them, but apparently it was such a departure from the person he believed me to be that I left his jaw hanging.
It made me smile inwardly.

Many years later, in between pre-birth contractions a nurse asked me about the tattoo she spied between the ridiculously open halves of my hospital gown.
She asked me if I knew what it meant, so naturally I answered "joy".  To which she responded "yeah, sort of."
Sort of??? I never did get to ask what she meant by "sort of" and the impending birth of a child took over.
But since then I have often thought of the apparently ambiguous symbol permanently etched on my back.
I have since toyed with idea of getting inked again, but have been hesitant because of what others might think.
And something about that annoys me. Why should I care what other people think? Besides which it's not as if I plan to get my face or half my body done.
So... now the debacle is continuing. I'm considering asking a tattoo artist if is possible to get the ambiguous symbol turned into (at the very least) something a little more meaningful.
I think part of the fascination is that I'm not likely to be suspected as someone who would get a tattoo.
I'm not the type, in a matter of speaking.
Or maybe I'm stereotyping. Is there a type? It's a lot more mainstream and accepted today than it was 13 years ago when I first got mine.
Then I figure, I've already got one, what difference would it make to change it?
Lend me your thoughts on this!