So, taking a holiday when you’re self-employed is pretty tricky. And by that I mean, “I think I understand now why I always get ill as soon as I land“.
Not that taking a holiday is easy when you work for someone else, either, of course, but in every “proper” job I’ve had, there’s always been some poor sod who’s been forced to fill in for me while I’ve been gone, meaning that I would only have to come BACK to total and utter stress, as opposed to going AWAY filled with it, on account of I’ve had to do three weeks worth of work in advance, before I go.
Which is basically where I’m at right now.
We leave for Florida on June 18th (also Terry’s birthday, so whew, thank God I won’t have to find something as good as all those surprises for him, eh? Happy birthday, Terry, I am taking you to Florida! You are helping me pay for it! You’re welcome!) . We’re only gone for two weeks, but I’ll need packing time before I leave, unpacking time when I get back and… well, I’d quite like a few extra days to lie around the house feeling sorry for myself, too. Factor in the inevitable flu (possibly of the swine variety!) and I figure I’ll need three weeks. Which means I have to write three weeks worth of blog posts before I go. (Note: not for this blog, obviously. I will be taking the laptop with me, so I’ll be able to update this one “on the go”. It’ll be like you’re all there with me! Either that or it’ll be like I totally didn’t bother to write anything for a fortnight because I’m lazy. Finding out will be part of the fun!) If I don’t do that, I won’t get paid, and then I’ll have to go to the workhouse, wah!
All of which is a long-winded way of saying sorry for the lack of updates, recently, but I’m buried under a pile of BLOG and I can’t seem to get out.
So, how’s your week?
Tagged holidays, Pro-Blogging, work
Yes, I started a new blog. Because I just don’t know where to stop, apparently. Anyway, leaving Shoewawa left a huge, shoe-blog shaped hole in my life, and what better way to fill it than with… er, a shoe blog?
Well, here it is. It’s called Shoeperwoman, and it is, unsurprisingly, a blog about shoes. The site just launched today, so we’re still busy unpacking the shoe boxes and sorting out the few remaining bugs, but I’m going to be updating it as often as I find beautiful/interesting/ugly shoes on my travels around the net. Which is a lot.
Check it out at Shoeperwoman.com. As for me, I guess I should really buy shoes to celebrate, no?
Tagged blogs, midas media, Pro-Blogging, shoeperwoman
I don’t watch much TV. Well, other than Neighbours, obviously. So when I started reading a lot of hype about a singer called Susan Boyle, who’d appeared on Britain’s Got Talent and apparently blown everyone away, I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to it. By now I’m pretty used to the fact that when I go out in public I don’t follow about 80% of the conversations that go on around me, because they’re all about The Apprentice, or some other show I don’t watch, so I just assumed this was another example of Stuff That Goes Right Over My Head.
But then I read that Susan comes from Blackburn, which is just a few miles from here. This was more interesting, so I clicked on a link and saw a picture of her. “Wait a minute,” I thought. “I’m sure I recognise this woman.” And I did.
Way back in the mists of time, when I was a reporter for The West Lothian Herald & Post, the paper (along with one of the local community councils) put together a CD called Music for a Millenium Celebration: The Sounds of West Lothian, which featured music from people around the area – everything from pipe bands to girl groups. I didn’t have much to do with this, but I did, at the time, have a weekly column called… wait for it… “Amber’s Reviews”, so it fell to me to review the finished CD. Our editor, Eddie Anderson, had organised the whole thing, and as it all progressed, he kept talking about this one woman who really stood out. And when he gave me the CD for my review, I totally understood why he’d been so impressed. I just went and dug out the CD, and Terry put the Susan Boyle track from it onto You Tube, so if you want to hear it for yourself, here’s the link. (Not sure if You Tube will allow this to stay up, so if it dissapears, sorry.)
(For those all of you who can’t be bothered reading the whole thing I wrote:
“…the true show-stopper for me is Susan Boyle’s heartbreaking rendition of ‘Cry Me a River’, which has been on repeat in my CD player ever since I got this CD…”)
I met Susan a few weeks later at the launch for the CD, and was really struck by her humility: she thanked me profusely for the review, and seemed genuinely amazed that people loved her voice so much. I can only imagine what she must be feeling now that she’s all over the news, but as you can see from the video of her on the show, which I finally got round to watching today, the attention is well deserved. It’s also a pretty cool thing for this part of the country, because Leon Jackson, who won the X-Factor a couple of years ago, also comes from around here (from my home town, in fact). So it may be Bandit Country, but damn, we got us some good singers…
(Listen to Susan singing ‘Cry Me a River’ here)
Tagged susan boyle; britain's got talent
So, you know the recession? The big, scary one that’s been keeping us all awake at night as we wonder what the future holds, and just how we’re going to pay for all those dresses we keep buying if it all goes badly wrong? THAT recession?
That would be the perfect time to decide to give up your last remaining freelance writing job and strike out on your own instead, wouldn’t it?
Oh. Good. Just checking.
Today I wrote my last ever post for Shoewawa, which, as some of you know, I’ve been editing for Shiny Media for almost two years now, and writing for it for even longer. (The post itself won’t go up until Tuesday, which is the end of the month, but like the Boy Scouts, I like to Be Prepared, so I wrote it today…) Shiny, as I said above, was my last remaining freelance client. When I first launched The Fashion Police, in 2006, I was still writing for lots of different people. As the site grew, though, and we added Hey-Dollface, I gradually got rid of them one by one (“got rid of” in the sense of stopping writing for them, I mean. There aren’t ex-clients buried under my patio or anything. Well, not many of them…) until Shoewawa was the last one standing.
It’s always been a bit of a balancing act. To start with, obviously, I needed the freelance work to pay the bills, but as my own sites have grown, I’ve been more and more aware that if I want them to continue to grow, I would need to dedicate much more time to them, and that’s time I just haven’t had because it’s all been spent on the freelance stuff. Catch-22.
Now, though, I’ve decided that the time has come to jump off the ledge, basically, and go it alone. It wasn’t an easy decision to make: I mean, I’ve been being paid to write about SHOES, for God’s sake, and if there are jobs out there that are better than that, well, I don’t know what they are. I’ve also met some abssolutely amazing people through Shoewawa (Gemma, Erin, Fi and Emma, to name but four), and,well, it’s going to be a bit of a wrench to leave it after all this time.
BUT.
I’m also really excited. You see, I never, ever wanted to have a “job”. I’m at my happiest when I can be my own boss, answer to no one but myself, and just generally make things up as I go along. Now, after an entire lifetime of working for other people, I’m going to be able to do that, and it honestly feels fantastic. I have lots of things planned: all of the sites in the Midas Media network will be moving to WordPress and getting a bit of a face lift, there’ll be various different features being added, and maybe even a new shoe-based project too, because clearly it would be too much to ask to expect me to stop obsessing about shoes. Oh hell, no.
I will probably be panicking quite a lot, too. It’s only fair to warn you about that.
In the meantime, though, I’m going to mark the end of my time at Shoewawa in the most fitting way I can think of: by buying shoes…
Tagged Pro-Blogging, shoewawa, work
There’s a full moon tonight. If recent circumstances hadn’t made this fact painfully obvious to me already, I’d have realised as soon as I received this email, earlier today:
—–Original Message—–
From: An Idiot
Sent: 11 March 2009 14:01
To: Amber, Verbal Punching Bag of the Internet
Subject: helpppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp.
dear amber:
i’ve reviewed books for the new york times, discussed the art of writing on npr’s fresh air with terry gross, and many other high points in my career as a freelance writer, and so i came to your site seeking enlightenment if not some freelance gigs, and what did i see, first thing?
do you have an interesting object?
tell us it’s story
ayieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
you need me. you need an editor. you really do.
I’ve removed two words which may or may not have been the author’s name from this literary feast (it was hard to tell due to the basic lack of writing skills) to protect the guilty but the rest is exactly as I received it, including font and funky yellow highlighter.
I think it becomes even more amusing when you realise it was written in response to this post at WritingWorld. Just in case you can’t be bothered reading it, it’s a post about its/it’s confusion, and I used an advert by a major publishing house as an example of how even the biggest companies sometimes get it wrong. It was the advert text that my correspondent is quoting here, and obviously, I’m not the best person to judge my own writing, but I thought it was pretty obvious that the incorrect “it’s” was an example, and wasn’t written by me (although I’m happy to admit that I get it wrong too, sometimes, even although I’m perfectly well aware of the correct use of the apostrophe). Apparently not, though.
That aside, I find it both shocking and amusing in equal measures that someone would send an email like THIS to ask me to employ them. Because, oh yeah, I’m going to totally want to take on a member of staff who wrote to me to slag off my website and try to make out that I’m an idiot who can’t spell! Doesn’t everyone want employees like that?
More importantly, though, if I WAS looking for a freelance editor (which I’m not, by the way), I’m thinking I’d probably go for one who wasn’t such a stranger to capital letters and punctuation, you know? One who, perhaps, knew that “ayieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee” is not a word, and that “help” only has the one “p”.
Sadly, these kind of emails have become the norm for me recently, and to be totally honest, it’s kinda killing the Internet for me. If it’s not people writing to hurl abuse at me, or treat me as their own personal Google, it’s people commenting here to tell me they don’t like my face and that I should change it, or leaving nasty comments at The Fashion Police because a post from two years ago is now – surprise,surprise! – out of date, and the dress in question is no longer available. (Quite how this is my fault is beyond me, but apparently it is. I’m slowly starting to realise that almost EVERYTHING is my fault. Everything.) And if THAT isn’t enough, people are still confusing me with Rihanna, and writing to me AS IF I AM HER.
(Note: I am not Rihanna. NOT. RIHANNA.)
Tagged email fun, freelance writing, I See Stupid People, OMG internet drama!
People, I am in a book. An actual book, that you can buy:
Yes, I know, I can’t quite believe it either. It’s a comedy book, and I’m still half expecting someone to pop up and tell me the joke is that I thought I’d get to be in it.
Anyway, it’s called Twitter Titters, and it’s the brainchild of the amazing Linda Jones ,who decided to do something for Comic Relief utilising Twitter. (For those of you lucky enough not to live in the UK, where it’s now apparently all-winter,all the time, Comic Relief is an organisation which raises money for charity by encouraging people to do something “funny”). Linda hit on the idea to publish a book full of comedy writing sourced on Twitter, and managed to get the backing of some high profile comedians, such as Dave Spikey and Nat Coombs (who have contributed pieces of writing to the book), plus volunteers to help judge the entries and edit the final product.
The project generated a lot of entries, so, as I say, I was absolutely amazed when Linda told me my contribution had been selected for inclusion in the book. I can only imagine that heavy bribe I promised to send Diane (who was one of the judges) must’ve done the trick. (Diane, I’ll get that money to you soon, ‘kay?). In the interests of transparency, I should say here that my piece is a post from this here blog, so some of you may have read it before – you’ll have to buy the book to find out which one it is, though, and you should totally buy it anyway, because there are some really great writers in it. Oh, and the money goes to charity, so you’ll be doing something good for the world, too.
You can buy it here. Or Rubin will bite your bum.
Tagged twitter titters, writing
I haven’t left the house since we got back from the Halloween party on Saturday night, other than a quick visit to Terry’s mum (who lives just around the corner) on Monday.
I have no idea how this happened. I mean, I’m going on a beach holiday next month for cryin’ out loud - the plan was to at least go to the gym every day, to prepare myself for the “eating my own body-weight” fest that will be December (holiday AND Christmas – whoops!), but somehow it got to Monday morning, the alarm went off … and I rolled over, looked at it, gave a small, piteous moan, then went back to sleep.
Then I woke up a while later, realised I had seventy gazillion blog posts to write by the end of the day, and ended up still sitting at the computer at 11pm, rubbing my eyes and wishing I had a normal job – you know, one where you don’t have to complete an entire month’s worth of work in advance, just to take a two week break. (Complicated, but that’s how it works, trust me.)
The next day? I did the same thing again. D’oh.
And so it’s gone on, to the point where I opened the blinds in the office this morning, looked out and was actually quite surprised to remember that hey, there is a WORLD out there, people! With, you know, STUFF in it. Yeah. Who knew?
Actually, the Grand Opening of the Blinds this morning was quite the event in itself. You see, up until now we’ve had mostly brilliantly sunny, but bitingly cold weather here. You’d think all this sunshine would make me happy, because I am all about the sunshine, right? Wrong. It does not make me happy. (“Fickle” is my middle name. Always remember that.) Not at this time of year, anyway, because that damn sun is so low in the sky that you walk around permanently blinded by it. And the way our house is positioned, we basically have to have the blinds shut ALL THE DAMN TIME from about October to May, because otherwise we can’t see our computer screens at all. (No, moving the screens doesn’t seem to help. Tried that.)
So, basically, what I’m trying to say here is that I’ve been sitting in a darkened room since Sunday, and actually? I’m starting to feel a little bit hysterical. So when I woke up this morning and realised it was a dull, foggy day, I actually gave a little cheer, because hey, there may be no sun, but at least I can has daylight! For the few short hours that we actually get daylight at this time of year, that is.
Did I mention I’m going on holiday soon? And that it cannot come quick enough?
Aaaand, that’s enough whining from me for one day, I think. How are you?
Tagged holidays, I hate winter, Pro-Blogging, the weather, working from home
So far, there isn’t a whole lot I haven’t shared on this here blawg in terms of the many ways in which I regularly manage to embarrass myself in public. I’ve faithfully documented all of the random acts of stupidity I’ve committed since this site launched and I’ve started to work my way through my early attempts at journaling , but this week it suddenly occurred to me that I have yet to tell you about my early career as a newspaper journalist. My early career as a newspaper journalist which regularly involved photos like this appearing on the front page of the paper I worked on:
Yes, that’s me in a football “strip” (hate that word. Why can they not just call it an “outfit”, like normal people? Why “strip”? Annoying!) Yes, that was the front page that week. I’d say it was a slow news week, but actually, football is a pretty big deal around here, and the team in question had got through to the final of… some competition or other… so even if World War Three had broken out, this would still have made the front page. Such is the world of the local newspaper.
I, of course, wrote the accompanying story, and I managed to write it in a strangely over-dramatic style (“NO!” I hear you cry in disbelief, but yes, it’s true…) which went on for several hundred words without really mentioning football much AT ALL, but which did make much of the fact that the teams colours were “claret and amber”. And my name is “Amber”. D’you see what I did there?
I have no idea if the team won. What I do know is that it took the editor and photographer about two hours to cajole me into wearing this outfit, persuading me that it would be for “the greater good”, and finally agreeing that yes, OK, I would get the front page if I just wore the damn “strip” already. And I would also get an inside page, in which I would talk some more about my wearing of the “strip” and not mention the team. Can you tell I’m not a football fan? Because everyone who read my story certainly could!
It’s a cut-throat world, the world of local journalism, I’m telling you. You have to be prepared to do almost anything for that front page. Remember this, oh young, aspiring reporters! Let this be a lesson to you. You know, like it was to me.
Note: Although the photo caption you can see here reads “Amber’s decked out from head to toe”, this was not in fact correct, as I was decked out from the waist-up only. I drew the line at those woolly knee socks footballers wear, or the shorts. Nevertheless, a small crowd gathered to laugh at me as this photo was taken. Yellow not my colour.
Tagged journalism
Yesterday, I was looking at my website referrers, as you do when you have no life to speak of, and I discovered that someone had found this here blawg after Googling the phrase, “Amber McNaught has red hair”. Seriously. So, who was it? Was it you? How about you? Because honestly, I think that’s one of the strangest “full name” searches I’ve had yet. I mean, if it had been a question, then it would’ve made a bit more sense. “Has Amber McNaught got red hair” I could’ve understood. Sort of. After all, I get LOADS of searches every month for the phrase “Has Amber only got one leg?” and it would be just a variation on that, wouldn’t it? (Just FYI, by the way, I have the full compliment of legs. Really.) But the bland statement “Amber McNaught has red hair” seems to suggest that the person doing the Googling was already familiar with the colour of my hair, and was using it as a means to, I don’t know, track me down and kill me, maybe? Which is… weird.
Anyway, this got me thinking. ”There must be an easier way for these poor stalkers to find me than typing random search terms into Google”, I thought. Because I am all heart. And then, as I was wasting time on Facebook this morning when I should’ve been working, I discovered that, lo! There is a way! There is a Blog Nertwork page, which the people who read your blog can all join, and then I will know who you all are and we can be like a big, happy internet family. Doesn’t that sound nice?
So, yes, you should all go and do that now. You can do it here. Now. There will be cookies for those who do.* Oh, and if you read The Fashion Police, you can also join its group here.
* Totally lying about the cookies, by the way.
Tagged facebook, weird google searches
OK, listen up folks, because I am totally not joking with that title, this is IMPORTANT! You will be questioned as you leave the blog to make sure you were paying attention, so you may want to take notes. I will wait while you go get a pen…
* waits patiently *
Ready? OK, well, at an unspecifed but imminent time over the next few days, this here blawg will be moving from its current blogging platform at Typepad to a new home at WordPress. Basically we’re doing this just because we can. No, actually, we’re doing it because things have been going really well with our Blawg Network lately (did you hear me just tempt fate REALLY LOUDLY there?) and so obviously Terry and I decided that we better hurry up and do something to screw things up. This is that thing.
So! Rubinman was the first blog to move, because Rubinman only has about three readers, and they’re all related to me. That went suspiciously smoothly, so because Forever Amber only has about five readers, it will be next to jump off the cliff edge, so to speak. This means that at some point – and perhaps at many points – over the next few days, you may notice that the site, like, totally disappears, or looks really weird and stuff.
Because the domain will be transfered at the same time as the posts, most of you five probably won’t notice much of a difference while the transfer is going on. We hope. All you’ll have to do is to bookmark www.foreveramber.co.uk and then sit there, frantically hitting the “refresh” button until I come back to you. (I WILL COME BACK TO YOU, MY PEOPLE! I WILL NOT ABANDON YOU! PLEASE DON’T FORGET ABOUT ME!)
There are, however, some of you who I know read the site through its Typepad URL, which is www.foreveramber.typepad.com. Those people will need to STOP DOING THAT. That URL will not be updated and will soon cease to exist. So you two need to get with the programme, change your bookmark to www.foreveramber.co.uk and then begin the frantically-hitting-refresh programme outlined above.
Then there are some of you who read the site via RSS. We don’t think you will be affected, because we will be trying to realign the universe feeds with the new platform, but actually, we have no idea how that will all work, so if you notice the feed hasn’t been updated for a while, either I’ve died or the feed isn’t working. If it’s the former, damn, that sucks. If it’s the latter, you will find a “subscribe by RSS” button somewhere on the new site to resubscribe. Or, you know, just keep hitting “refresh”.
As for those of you who subscribe to the email updates, finally… yeah, good luck with that. Also: see “subscribing via RSS”, above.
So, yes, I think that’s everything. I will post again once the transfer has been completed and my sanity has been restored. If, of course, you never hear from me again, well, clearly something catastrophic has happened and Terry deleted the site by accident. Blame him.
See you on the other side, folks! (I hope.)
|
|
|
