 A comment posted on one of my other blogs this week had me gnashing my teeth in fury and rolling my eyes in disgust. (Why yes, I DO love me some drama, yes I do.) I reproduce it here for your amusement:
“does n e one no wher chanelle got her black bow chain she wears xoxox”
Eh? Now, call me stupid (many people do) but it took me a good few seconds to actually translate this to “Does anyone know where Chanelle got her black bow chain she wears”. Even that’s not the greatest grammar in the world ever, but at least you could understand it – which is, after all, the whole point of writing. Why write something that people will have to puzzle over and spend time decoding when you could just get straight to the point with some good, old fashioned English?
Sadly, I think that good, old fashioned English is becoming an endangered species. The “xoxox” at the end of the message above tells me that it was probably written by a teenager, and this is how many teenagers seem to communicate these days. The text message has killed off the English language. Oh, how we mourn!
Personally, I refuse to give in to the txt spkrs. That’s why Pet Peeve # 3 is Text Speak. It should really have been number one, shouldn’t it?
People tend to make a lot of assumptions about working from home, and what it’ll be like. Some of them, such as the “you’ll save time on commuting” one, are absolutely true. Others – well, not so much, really. In fact, some of the assumptions people make about working from home are just plain wrong. Here are just five of them:
1. You’ll be able to set your own hours
This is true to an extent, in that people who work from home tend to have more control over their working hours than people who work for someone else, but only to an extent. The truth is that most clients will expect you to be available during normal working hours, and, for most people, that means Monday – Friday, 9am – 5pm. So while it’s true that people who work from homecan choose to have a lie in anytime they feel like it, they shouldn’t be surprised if that lie in is disturbed by a ringing phone at 9am on a Monday morning.
2. You’ll spend more time with your family
Again, this is true to an extent, but only if by “spending time with the family” you mean “being in the same house at the same time as them”. Of course, it is possible to manage your workload in such a way that you have oodles of free time in which to take the dog for long walks and spend time playing with the kids, but I don’t know many freelancers who’ve managed it. Most freelancers I know actually work longer hours than people who’re employed by someone else, and many of those with children have been forced to employ a child minder for a few hours each day or week to allow them to get the work done. While you may not fall into that category, if you do, you can forget all about those long walks in the countryside and quality time with the kids.
3. Your house will be spotless
When I first started freelancing from home, I fondly imagined that all of those chores I was struggling to keep up with when I worked for someone else would suddenly be done with not even the slightest bit of fuss. No more would I rush home at lunchtime to empty the washing machine and clean the floors! No longer would I return home, exhausted, only to be faced with a mountain of ironing and a sink filled with dirty dishes! Why, I would have time to cook meals from scratch! And bake! Um, well, not really. Now that I work from home and have to be both boss and employee (not to mention secretary, accountant and receptionist), I need a cleaner/gardener/ironing service more than ever. Go figure.
4. You will earn lots of money, without doing much work
Some people do earn lots of money by working from home – this much is true. Those people, though, are working very, very hard indeed. Trust me. They’re probably working much harder than the people who drive to an office every day, and if you confronted them with the statement above, they’d laugh their asses off at it. If you think that you’ll be able to sit in front of the TV, happily stuffing envelopes and being paid for it, think again. Every single “work from home without actually doing much in the way of work” scheme I’ve ever encountered has been a scam. If you want to make money by working from home, you’ll have to put in the hours – and lots of them.
5. You’ll get more work done, because you won’t have all of the distractions of working in an office
You’d think that, wouldn’t you? Offices can be horrible, noisy places, with phones ringing, colleagues chattering and people coming and going non-stop. Unfortunately, your home can be exactly the same. Once your friends and family realise that you’re at home all day, your time will no longer be your own. They will “pop in” for coffee. They will call you up for a chat. They’ll ask you to babysit, or do a grocery run, or give them a lift somewhere, because “you’re just sitting at home all day, anyway”. For some reason, other people find it very difficult to understand that someone who works from home actually haswork to do, and this will drive you crazy very, very quickly. Of all of the problems I’ve ever encountered in the time I’ve been working from home, this one has to be the hardest to deal with – and the most infuriating.
It’s not all bad, though. Despite these five myths, I still love working from home, and wouldn’t have it any other way. If you want to do it, go for it – just remember it may not be quite the easy option people expect it to be.
Yup, it happened again folks. There I was, minding my own business, getting totally stressed out TO THE MAX, and wham! Migraine alert! I spent part of yesterday evening lying a darkened room wondering if I was going to die. How is your week going?
Oh course, chances are that my old friend Stress has caused the migraine. Yesterday was a very, very stressful day as, in addition to the "not humanly possible" workload I had cleverly managed to get for myself, I also had two commissions for The Scotsman to finish (and, indeed, to start), the house to clean, the dog to walk, and a million and one things to buy for my holiday. So, we’re certainly having a lot of fun with stress at the moment, that’s for sure. Hey, I wonder what I can justify buying myself this time?
GOD, I need a holiday.
Other things I need right now:
- Books to read on said holiday
- Shoes (well, DUH!)
- sunscreen
- Benefit Speedbrow
- Warm, fleecy thing in case it’s cold on the plane. (Yes, you would think I’d already have something like this, wouldn’t you?)
- Johnson’s Holiday Skin
- Contact lens cleaner
- Eye makeup remover
- A pony
- Rich husband
- Some little vest tops because I dyed all mine blue by mistake
- Ditto underwear
- A couple of free hours to actually go out and buy all these things
I think I need to go lie down in that darkened room again…
Well, I totally found a cure for my current state of stress – or rather Erin (henceforth known as "The Voice of Temptation") has found it. It’s handbags, folks. Yes, handbags. Y’all totally thought I was going to say "shoes" didn’t you? Well, don’t think I didn’t consider it. But, although shoes are the main love of my life (man, I hope Terry doesn’t read this), I also love (and write about) handbags. So it was with no small excitement that, having just finished watching Neighbours this afternoon (Paul Robinson does have a brain tumour by the way, just as Doctor Amber predicted. Which makes me think: I wonder if I might have a brain tumour? Are red weals a sign of brain tumours?* Why, I think my head’s starting to hurt just thinking about this..) I retired to the office to find an email from The Voice of Temptation.
"Handbags" wrote Erin. "On sale." Actually, she wrote more than that, and in a proper, joined-up sentences kind of way, because she is like that. But "handbags" and "sale" were the words that jumped out at me. By the time I got her email, Erin had already bought four of said handbags for herself. I was soon to beat her spending total, though, for within minutes of hitting up that website and with just a few little clicks of the mouse, I had bought myself this:
God, I really hope Terry doesn’t read this.
No, I jest. Terry knows. And, faced with the choice of living with either Stressed-Out-Amber or Happy-Amber-Who-Also-Has-a-New-Handbag, he even agreed that yes, we can totally give up food for a while. We can eat next year or something. Anyway, I really needed a new bag for my laptop (YES IT IS A LAPTOP BAG. IT IS TOTALLY A LAPTOP BAG. Shut up.) because – *casually inserts dramatic news in a post about handbags* – we are going to Florida in two weeks time.
Yes! Florida! Party in the city where the heat is on!All night on the beach ’til the break of dawn! We’re goin’ to Miami! Welcome to Miami! (Note: totally not goin’ to Miami. Well, I mean, we will be goin’ to Miami, but only for the day. But still.) Anyway, I wasn’t going to mention this here on the blawg because, well, there are some funny people out there, y’know? But then I bought my new laptop bag and Ithought, "Hey! I could take my laptop with me and liveblog my trip!" Because everyone will love that, right? So, yes, Florida at the end of the month. Leaving from Glasgow airport, which was recently targeted by terrorists. Flying in to Sanford, where a plane recently missed the runway and crashed into some houses. Did I mention I’m frightened of flying?
On the other hand: Sephora! Anthropologie! Nordstrom! I really shouldn’t have bought a new handbag laptop bag!
Tagged florida, handbags, stress
Yesterday, for only the second time in my adult life, I went out without my makeup on. (The first time was years ago, on holiday in Florida, and my dad made me do it because he wanted dinner and didn’t want to wait for me to mess around with makeup. And dad, if you’re reading this – still not over it). Anyway, yesterday’s “out without my mask on” episode had nothing to do with my dad, and everything to with the RED WEALS.
Yes, folks, they are back, and they are back with a freaking vengeance. Yesterday, I woke up with one eye so swollen I looked like I’d gone twelve rounds with Tyson, and the other decorated with an attractive RED WEAL. Did this suck? Oh I’ll say it sucked. And when I say “I went out without my makeup” I should just add “Only because I absolutely had to” and “I didn’t remove my sunglasses the whole time. Sorry to the lady at the supermarket who thought I was going to try and rob her.” Now I understand why celebrities sometimes refuse to let their minions make eye contact with them – they probably have RED WEALS too.
I think it’s stress. It was definitely stress the last time this happened, and I know that my body has this neat trick of dealing with stress by CREATING EVEN MORE STRESS. Because that’s totally helpful, body, thanks. And also: screw you.
The slight problem with this “weals caused by stress” thing is that I don’t really know what to do about it. Hot baths? Long walks in the countryside? Chocolate? Wine? WHAT? Luckily the weal situation is a lot better today than it was yesterday. Maybe by the end of the weekend I will even look like a normal person again, hmmm?
Tagged skin problems, stress
It’s OK, you can stand down the vigil, folks, I didn’t die of a massive hangover after Friday night’s excesses – I may be old, but I’m not quite that old. Yet.
No, there have been no posts here on the old blawg over the last few days, because I’ve been busy blogging elsewhere, particularly over at Shoewawa, which I’ve just been made editor of. Go me! This is obviously very exciting for me because it means I get to spend even more time every day looking at shoes and writing about them and I get paid for it. As far as work goes, I really don’t think it gets much better than that, and I sometimes wish I could go back in time to sit down with my younger self, way back in the days when I was working weekends in call centre, or doing some other job I hated, and say, "Fear not, young Jedi, for one day you will be paid to write about shoes. A shoe blogger you will be! Much you have to learn! And also: don’t bother renting The Cable Guy, because seriously, that film sucks."
So yes, that’s what I’d say to my younger self. I’d also make the time to stop by the desks of everyone who ever made fun of my shoes, and flip them the bird I would! GOD, I wish I could go back in time and meet my younger self. Preferably during that period when I used to wear "pelmet skirts", so that I could take myself aside and give myself a quick kick in the butt.
Anyway, this change to my blogging workload is also exciting because it effectively means that I can now afford to drop the boring old copywriting and be all about the blogging, all the time. I’ll still do the odd bit of feature writing for the newspapers (if, of course, the newspapers in question will still have me), but I guess this makes me one of them pro-blogger thingummies now, for real. I don’t think my younger self ever dreamt of being a pro-blogger when she grew up, so she probably wouldn’t be too impressed with that (mostly because I am so old that blogging hadn’t even been invented when I was a young ‘un. And also because my younger self was a bit of an ass), but if I told her the bit about the shoes, and about how you get to work from home and only get dressed when it’s absolutely necessary, I think she’d be down with it. And if she wasn’t, teach her I would.
I’ll stop talking like Yoda now. No, I really will.
So, tonight? We are having a party:
Nothing’s too good for our guests. That’s Asda’s very finest "wine in a box" there, I’ll have you know. (In Terry’s defence – for it was he who went shopping while I was lyingaround the house with my feet up working – it is a cocktail party…)
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