editorialgirl

I haven’t blogged for ages, so I thought I’d slide back into it gently with a little story from the weekend.

I was on my fourth pint of Doom Bar on Friday night – possibly my fifth, actually; Daz had already gone home but I was on a roll – when our table was suddenly joined by a friend of a friend*.

*Actually: friend of a friend is probably overstating it. I’m not even sure we would have spoken were it not for the terrible service at the Cocks; the queue for the bar was at least six people deep and beginning to engulf our table, endocytosis-like.

He spoke first.

“Hellooo… I wasn’t sure if I should ask this!”

That’s generally a bad start to a conversation. But we’ve all had a drink, yada yada. I’ll roll with it.

“Go on…?”

“A little bird told me that you, er… you know…”

He gestured downwards. At the table? At my pint?

“…told me you’re expecting! Is that right?”

The beer stayed in my mouth, although I’m not sure how. I was laughing – mostly with shock that he was stupid enough to ask – but I managed to swallow before I replied.

“NO! No, that’s not right. That’s…” I looked down, to where he was looking. “That’s a beer belly.”

I’m not even sure he was embarrassed. Perhaps I shouldn’t have carried on smiling, but I was just so surprised. He didn’t go away straight away, either. He started talking really quickly instead.

“I should have realised, yeah, of course, I mean, you wouldn’t be out drinking pints I suppose, but, you know, you never know, do you…?”

No. You never know. Which is why YOU NEVER ASK. Seriously, what possesses people?

And I have no idea who the “little bird” was. Someone who obviously doesn’t know me at all, or – paranoid much? – thought it would be funny to stir.

It could be worse, I know. One definitely-not-pregnant friend’s experience involved a (female) acquaintance that she hadn’t seen for a while squealing from across the room, “Ooh! Look at you! BAAABY BUUUMP!” before running over, hands outstretched, for a feel.

What a pranny.

The time has finally come. Someone else has set up a company called Editorial Girl – providing copywriting and editing services, albeit from a base in the US – with the corresponding .com website address.

Obviously I feel a bit strange about this – but the fact it’s happened is not very surprising. The .com domain had been available when I first started using the name editorialgirl but, at that time, I didn’t identify with it as strongly as I do now. Had I known six years ago that I would one day answer to the name ‘editorialgirl’ in public (yes, sometimes people recognise me from Twitter or Flickr but don’t know my real name), then perhaps I would have registered it then.

I have already written about how and why I came up with the name editorialgirl to use online. What I wrote then still stands:

These days, I identify with the name editorialgirl (all one word, please, and all lower case) as much as my given name. I might even prefer it a little, since it’s virtually unique. I feel complete ownership over it. It’s my name on Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, Identi.ca and b3ta (to name a few*) and if ever I find someone else using it – and there have been a couple – I feel absolutely indignant. I love editorialgirl.

So, we’ve established I have an emotional connection to the name, but does it really matter?

Objectively, I suppose the answer is “probably not”. Despite the fact that it refers to my work as an editor and writer, I don’t use the name editorialgirl (or Editorial Girl, or any combination of the above) as an official business name – so I can’t really begrudge someone else taking it up.

Or can I? When does an online name become a “personal brand”? Should I even think of it in those terms? Do I have any right at all to feel as though editorialgirl is my intellectual property?

I feel… discombobulated.

Partly, of course, I’m a bit embarrassed that I didn’t register the .com domain years ago. Then there’s a little bit of … well, I don’t know what the word is, but it involves not appreciating what you’ve got ’til it’s gone, or wanting the best of both worlds… or kicking yourself for resting on your laurels, or… something. I had the choice of using editorialgirl as my company name when I registered with the HMRC as a sole trader / freelancer… but I didn’t. I chose to just stick with my ‘real’ name – now Emma Wright. I saw the name editorialgirl as a bit too frivolous. But now I’m thinking… well, you know; “Google” is hardly a sensible, serious, businessy word.

Now I’m trying to think about it professionally. Although I don’t use the name for work, I do find it odd that someone planning a start-up would just go ahead and use a name that is already taken on pretty much every social media tool. Even if you weren’t planning to ply your trade online, you’d surely check Facebook and Twitter, just to make sure your search rankings weren’t going to be too diluted… wouldn’t you? Just in case you wanted to branch out and do some web PR at some point in the future? I wonder if the woman behind Editorial Girl googled it and decided that it would be fine, as none of the results pointed to a company name?

Perhaps Editorial Girl (US) already has a large offline following. After all, I doubt that not having the Twitter name will matter to them when the .com name starts to come first for every Google search – as it inevitably will if the business takes off. And they already have a Facebook page, with fans, even if they don’t have the “http://www.facebook.com/editorialgirl” URL. [EDIT: They do now! See update, below]

Completely co-incidentally, someone retweeted this blog post from ‘Shoeperwoman’ just after I found out about the Editorial Girl website. Although it’s not a retail site, Amber makes money from “Shoeperwoman” – she refers to the blog as her livelihood – but had never trademarked the name. Now someone else has applied to use “Shoeper-woman” as a trademark for their retail blog.  I bristled as I read her post. How dare they? I’ll be very interested to find out how that goes. It seems absurd that years of use and a large blog following may not protect a name.

As for Editorial Girl and editorialgirl – well, I guess I’ll just have to see how this goes, too. Perhaps it’s the start of a silly battle, where our weapons are SEO and useful blog content (er… dammit. They’ll win). Or perhaps we’ll live peacefully – side by side online and on opposite sides of the Atlantic in real life – for the foreseeable future.

And perhaps this is the kick up the arse I needed to finally get serious about my freelancing work. Well, you never know. Keep your eyes peeled for a page about my editing and copywriting work appearing here on this blog over the next few weeks…!

* I had a bit of fun this afternoon trying to remember every site on which I use the name editorialgirl – and when I signed up to each one. If I was using editorialgirl as a business name, would I have a case?

http://www.flickr.com/people/editorialgirl/ (June 2005)
http://editorialgirl.blogspot.com/ (July 2005)
http://www.last.fm/user/editorialgirl (January 2007)
http://www.editorialgirl.co.uk/ (October 2007)
http://twitter.com/#!/editorialgirl (April 2008)
http://identi.ca/editorialgirl (July 2008)
http://www.facebook.com/editorialgirl (June 2009, when username URLs became available) [EDIT: Not any more. See update, below]
skype name “editorialgirl” (April 2011)
http://editorialgirl.tumblr.com (April 2011)

(Well, OK. I have to admit that I only signed up to those last two after talking to someone about online profiles last week and realising they were still available. Petty, moi?)
Oh and on YouTube I’m editorialgirlUK – editorialgirl is taken by someone else (but not, surprisingly, by the ‘new’ Editorial Girl).

UPDATE 26.09.2011: Just got back from a week’s holiday to find that I couldn’t log into Facebook. Why? Because my username – editorialgirl – “violated username policy”. Huh? After changing it to “emma.editorialgirl” I was able to log in again and find out more: apparently one of the ways a violation might occur is when a username conflicts with a (Facebook) page of the same name. So, despite the fact that I’d been using editorialgirl on Facebook before ‘pages’, or this new company, even existed – they get the username, just like that. Thanks a bunch!

I love being creative, but I’m not an artist.

Why? Because art is form and content. This is a new one on me, I’m ashamed to say. I have always understood ‘form’: the aesthetic part, the part that pleases the eye, or rolls off the tongue… but it’s only relatively recently that I’ve come to understand that a piece of work needs ‘content’ in order to be art. How does it interact with the viewer? Why was it produced? What thoughts does it provoke? What’s the story?

The photos on my flickr account that get the most hits (or even, dare I say, praise) are, of course, the photos that have both form and content but – silly though it sounds – I’ve only just realised this. I love taking photos with form: shapes and lines, shadows and silhouettes and symmetry… but I never take the time to think about the content.

	Good form, dubious content: the space between the Central Library and the Conservatoire. I love this photo – phwoar, the symmetry! – but what does it mean? Nothing. Are the buildings interesting? Well, possibly, but it’s obvious that’s not what this photo is about. So is it art?
Good form and good content, although only by accident or in hindsight: a guy sitting on a wall. This is one of few photos I’ve taken that could be said to illustrate both form and content (the Moseley Road Baths set is an obvious contender, too, but it’s all over this blog already). It’s an interesting image, but there’s also a potential story. I called it ‘waiting’. What’s he waiting for? There you go: art.
	This photo of Birmingham’s BT tower has good form (in my opinion, of course) – the silhouette; the shapes formed by the buildings around it; the sky; the light. But the actual content is … meh, pretty meaningless. Perhaps if BT had just gone bust, or if the tower was attacked by terrorists the very night I took the photo, it would also have good content. Would that make it art? Is the photo, as it stands, not art?

But do I even want to make art? Does any of this matter?

I left school with dire A level results, no chance of getting into university and no idea of what I wanted to do (or might be capable of), but I knew I liked being creative. I wrote stories and I played music and occasionally managed to get as far as drawing and sketching, taking photos and making scrapbooks and collages, but I didn’t really know whether there was a way that I could take it further – or indeed if I should.

I wrote to my friend John, who was always destined to be an artist and in 1994 was at college in London. I asked if he thought I should do an art foundation course. (I imagine my letter was fairly childish in both form and content.)

I’ve still got John’s reply, typewritten on a scrap of paper – I found it again the other day. After explaining how to put together a portfolio, how to decide on which college to apply to and what the interview stages might be like, he had written:

“…But is art actually what you’re into? There’s a potter at our college who refuses to be called a “ceramicist” because it’s horribly not-what-she’s-into. She makes pots – she’s a potter. A ceramicist is into art – trying to make a socio-political point through the clay. Are you more of a crafty good-with-your-hands-I-just-want-to-make-objects-of-beauty type? (Such an attitude is unlikely to get you too far at art college.) That sort of decision is up to you, and will probably come naturally.”

At the age of nineteen, I didn’t know what a socio-political point was, never mind whether I might want to make one through art. I realised that what I thought was art and what artists actually do are totally different things. I decided that, given I didn’t even understand the point he was making, art college probably wasn’t for me.

Luckily, over the years, I’ve drifted into what turns out to be a career – one that’s allowed me to use my creative talents in a way that I’m comfortable with. Being a website content editor means producing content – words and pictures – within very specific guidelines. And I’m able to combine this with a satisying amount of logic and problem-solving; I need the rules of the web. It’s only vaguely creative and it’s certainly not art (but it’s very me).

I’ve wondered about what people have called my “artistic streak” over the years and come to the conclusion that I was right not to go to art college. I’m not an artist. I have the same problem with anything that I produce ‘creatively’: I’m all about the form; I’m far too literal. I don’t write enough outside of work because, although I like to think I’m good with words, I don’t have enough original ideas. I would love to write stories, but a story is ‘content’ by definition and sadly thinking up content of my own stumps me most of the time.

Could I ever be an artist? I don’t know. I’m going to be pretentious and say that one of my new year’s resolutions will be to try and give as much thought to content as I do form. At least, I’ll devote some time to thinking about it when I take pictures. As far as writing goes, I might just have to wait for that big story – you know, the one that everyone has inside them? – to come pouring out when I’m least expecting it. And not to beat myself up too much if it never does.

My Twitter friend Jack Schofield linked to a rather interesting article about procrastination yesterday.

Now, as anyone who knows me will attest, I’m a classic procrastinator. I always have been. As a baby, I’m told I didn’t bother breathing for the first few minutes of my life. No reason – just – meh, couldn’t be bothered. As a schoolgirl, homework was put off to such an extent that I once received five detentions for incomplete work in one morning and was eventually asked to visit the school’s educational psychologist to work out what the problem was (not that I ever learned the outcome of that). As an adult I’m one of these people who buys numerous books on the subject and, of course, never gets around to reading any of them, resorting instead to all sorts of weird habits in order to try and trick myself into JFDI mode. Unsurprisingly, then, I clicked on this straight away. Well, all right, I made a coffee first.

The article takes a different approach to the procrastination problem: it’s not about time management, apparently; it’s about ‘thinking about thinking’. So far, so psycho-babbly. But since reading it yesterday morning, something from the piece has really stuck with me. It took a couple of reads – there’s a lot of analogy in there, plus some interesting snippets of research to get you thinking – but have a look at this, the killer quote, right near the end (my emphases):

The now you may see the costs and rewards at stake when it comes time to choose studying for the test instead of going to the club, eating the salad instead of the cupcake, writing the article instead of playing the video game.

The trick is to accept the now-you will not be the person facing those choices, it will be the future-you – a person who can’t be trusted. Future-you will give in, and then you’ll go back to being now-you and feel weak and ashamed. Now-you must trick future-you into doing what is right for both parties.

(From youarenotsosmart.com)

In other words, you need to focus on your future self and decide what that person will want. Then, if now-you commits to something… like, now, that makes it really hard for future-you to get out of it and… stuff will happen.

Some of the tricks I use at work are along these lines; for example having the now do this application open in a bookmark window constantly shows the task I should be finishing and, unlike a paper ‘to do’ list, doesn’t tempt me with other, simpler tasks until I’ve finished. Tricks like this help on a superficial level – I can meet deadlines – but they don’t change my behaviour on any deeper level. I still open Twitter every few minutes, or suddenly decide a coffee would really help.

Thinking of my future self – “future-me” – as a concept, on the other hand, feels important. It’s been niggling at me since I read the piece. And it seems to be working already. Just saying to myself “future-me will really like me for this…” has already led to me clearing out my wardrobe. Normally I’d have just cursed the lack of space in there and vowed to do it at a later date like I usually do, but last night I JF-did-it. Not only that, I finished the job – most unlike me. I sorted all the clothes into summer stuff for storage, stuff I can sell and charity shop stuff, and bagged them up, ready to go. It only took five minutes and I was insanely pleased to realise that future-me (and my husband, granted) would thank me over the next few days for doing that rather than leaving a big pile of clothes to trip over in the spare room.

So there you go. I really hope that this might be a bit of a game changer. Earlier tonight I thought about blogging and instead of writing down the subject line in my ‘potential blog posts’ file (yeah, don’t judge me), I figured “future-me would really like it if I just blogged this right now,” then sat down and, well, you know the rest.

Hmm. Let’s see how long it lasts.

(Photo: Pete Ashton)
Yay! We got married. Then we went on honeymoon. Then we went back to work and time started going all fast again… So fast that we haven’t yet managed to start saying ‘thank you’ to people for gifts and so on.

So this is the start of the post wedding admin. It’s a list of all the people and organisations that we used for the Big Day. I’ve been asked by a few people (mostly friends planning their own dos) who we used and how we found them, so this should answer that.

For the most part, though, we were really lucky to know a bunch of talented people. This sounds cheesy but, honestly, I feel utterly privileged to be able to name many of the people listed below as my friends. Not only did I love their work anyway, which made the choices a lot simpler, but it made it a lot easier to talk about what we wanted without getting the feeling we were being judged (ninjas on your wedding cake, anyone?).

For the stuff where we didn’t have friends to help, we stayed local. The florist is less than 200 yards from our house and the furthest either of us went for anything was four miles, to the city centre, where I had my hair done by my usual hairdresser on the morning of the wedding. There wasn’t any big moral reasoning behind this. We just happen to live in an area where good stuff happens.

So here goes. The Credits:

Venue
Highbury Hall (Birmingham City Council)
Moseley

Photos
Matt Murtagh and Pete Ashton
Moseley

Cake (Pictured, right. Photo: Matt Murtagh)
Jenny Williams AKA Jennywenny Cakes
San Diego (yes, Jenny travelled 5000 miles to make us a cake…)

Flowers
Jonathan and Bev at Winspers
Moseley

Bride and bridesmaid’s dresses
Lorna and Sarah at Gorgeous Bridal Studio
Cotteridge

Emma’s hair
Michelle at the Red Salon
Birmingham B1

Emma’s makeup
Kate Pritchard
South Birmingham

Groom and best man’s suits
Benjamin Vaughan
Kings Heath

Buttonholes (for the groomsmen)
Emma Lockey
Kings Heath

Music (during the ceremony)
Elizabeth Rattlidge singing, with Al Gurr on piano
Stourbridge/Birmingham

DJ
Paul “@theaardvark” Taylor
Burntwood

I’ve probably forgotten a load of stuff, but in the meantime, thank you, thank you, thank you to all of these people. And of course, a massive ‘thank you’ to all of our friends and family who helped us with all the preparations, kept us sane and finally turned up on the day and had a bloody good time. It was brilliant.

I’m getting married in five weeks. Exciting, huh? Yes. Well, yes and no. I do seem to have got a lot more stressed about it than I was intending to. For someone who is usually quite laid back, I’ve had more “bridezilla moments” than I thought I would over the last few months.

These are the things that have surprised me the most about my wedding planning so far.

The Dress: It’s A Proper One

One of the first things I did was to look for a dress. I hadn’t been sure that I wanted a ‘proper’ wedding dress – after all, I never wear dresses in real life, and those full length ivory things all look the same, don’t they? – but after chatting to a few people, I thought I should at least try the bridal shops to see what was what. My sister, font of wedding knowledge since her own nuptials a couple of years ago, made the appointments. I phoned our mom, and we spent a couple of Saturday mornings together looking at ‘proper’ dresses, despite my protestations that it was only February.

I was surprised to find that, actually, wedding dresses don’t all look the same. In fact, there’s rather a lot to the whole wedding dress thing. I was quickly educated in the difference between tea length and cocktail length; chiffon and tulle. I even went to two different shops. In the second, I was disconcerted to hear myself explain, with some confidence, that I definitely did not want a mermaid.

The second surprise was that choosing a dress eight months in advance wasn’t a ludicrous idea. In fact, explaining to the shop assistants that my wedding was in September actually elicited a pause, the words “September this year?” and suck of air through the teeth. “We have to order it in,” they explained, “and have it delivered to the shop.” Well, ye-es. And that takes nearly a year? But so it has, apparantly. They still haven’t phoned me for my first fitting. I find this quite weird.

The Registry Office: Stuck In The Olden Days

I know the Registry Office is a government office dealing with really important stuff, so they have to do things formally, but they’re frustratingly old-fashioned and pedantic.

For example, their phone calls are crackers. Once we’ve established I am the person they need to speak to, they introduce themselves in full. “Hello, my name is Miss [say, Smith] and I’m calling you on behalf of Birmingham Registry Office.” (Yes, they introduce themselves by their title. It’s like Are You Being Served.) I reply “oh, hello!” in my cheeriest, we’ve-spoken-before-and-I-know-you voice, but it doesn’t stop them. “I’m calling you about your forthcoming wedding…” they say, every time. And despite my “yes, yes, hello, how can I help” responses, they continue. “…to Mister Darren Wright, on the twenty fifth of September, two thousand and ten.” The first time, it took every ounce of restraint to stop myself from getting the giggles. The second time, I had to stop myself from shouting “NO SHIT, SHERLOCK”. Or saying “oh my god! I didn’t know about this!” The third, fourth and fifth times, I’ve been dying to say it along with them, but in a stupid high voice. “Mithter Dawwen Wight! Mmmnty fifth of Thepthemburrrr!” (I did it in my head, anyway. It helped.)

Daz had a weird chat with them last week, too. They were after some extra information and, after they made a big deal about the urgency of receiving this information as soon as possible, he suggested emailing it to them, rather than posting it as they’d requested. The assistant was apparently a bit flummoxed, saying, “well, you could email it, but there isn’t much point – I wouldn’t get it til tomorrow anyway”. Why was that, then? It wasn’t even mid afternoon. Had they got problems with their email? “No,” she explained, “all the emails are read at 9 o’clock in the morning, then they’re all printed out and we each get a copy on our desks. So if you email me now, I won’t get it until tomorrow.” He was baffled. Couldn’t she just access her email now? “No, it’s not my email,” she said. “It’s the office email. Only one person has access to it, and she only looks at it at 9 o’clock each morning.” Whu… why? “That’s just the way we do things.” Well, that’s silly, he told her. “Well, it works for us,” she replied. Bonkers.

Other People: They Ask A Lot Of Questions

Finally – and this is the biggie – managing other people’s expectations has proved to be surprisingly stressful. It’s amazing how much angst can be caused by worrying that you’re going to cause offence to close friends and family simply by making the decisions that have to be made.

Some friends don’t seem to realise what a juggling act the whole thing is. Space at the venue is limited. Catering is expensive, so every detail counts. The reason I need the RSVPs returned isn’t because I’m a psycho bride with a spreadsheet obsession; it’s because if one person can’t make it, there’s a list of friends we’d really like to offer that place to, that we haven’t been able to invite so far. And if one person suddenly announces they’re bringing an uninvited guest, that’s one more place we can’t give to someone we actually know.

The other problem is that, despite waving their hands and saying “it’s your day!”, families do seem to have preconceptions of what their relatives’ weddings should be like. Today, for example, [a family member who will remain nameless] said “are you going to run [a really minor detail] past [another family member]?” Up until this past week, I’d probably have said yes, thinking that I was keeping the peace. Today I just said, firmly, “no! Because it’s our wedding, no-one else’s.” Then laughed through the ensuing couple of seconds of awkward silence. Whoah. I’ve changed.

And lovely though it is that everyone’s so interested, do people (okay, women) really need to know every detail, every day? Even when all that’s happened that week is that we’ve, say, filled in a form for the registry office, I find myself making up other stuff to make my wedding sound more interesting to them. “Er, yeah, phoooo, I’ve been having a good old think about flowers this week. What’s your opinion on gerberas?”

As an aside, I’ve found that some girls – including total strangers – love all the wedding chat. I suppose for those who loved preparing for their own wedding, it’s like a hobby; they know all the jargon and they really care about the finer details of the subject. I am not one of those girls. I didn’t care about those details before, I don’t care about them when I go to other weddings and so I’m not going to care about them for mine either. When someone asks “are you going for a train?” or “what’s your scheme?” and I realise I not only have a clue what they mean, but know what my answers are (‘a very small one’, and ‘coffee and cream’), I find it hard to hide my vague nausea. I’m sorry. I just don’t get enjoyment out of this amount of planning. Yes, it’s a day to remember – and it’ll be a bloody brilliant day – but I’m quite sure that in ten years time, I will neither remember nor care what the height of heel was on my shoes, or how my bouquet was tied.

I’m beginning to read everything the wrong way, too. Whilst the rational part of my brain is sure the constant questions are just well meaning, the other part – the bridezilla brain – just knows there’s a passive aggressive tone to them. “Have you thought about doing it this way?” (where “this way” is a tradition we’re not going to follow) is a line that raises my hackles. No. We’d have mentioned if we were going to do it that way. And what is the correct response to “I went to a wedding recently where they… [did something cheesy]“? Thanks for the advice, but we’re not going to do stuff because your mate saw it in a magazine…? Probably not.

Today I told someone, “well, that’s a nice idea for someone who can be bothered, but put it this way, if it’s a bunch of hassle, then you can rest assured I have no intention of getting myself into it”. I meant it in a light-hearted, funny way, but I sounded like a bitch.

Sigh.

I recently found a story I wrote in secondary school that’s made me rethink the way I write. Or don’t write, as is more often the case.

The story is called Prejudice. It’s the tale of a girl called Jo, who’s being bullied at school and decides to run away. (I know. Just… stop sniggering.) It hasn’t got a date on it, but it does have my class number, so I know it was written in the third year, when – as one of the youngest in my school year – I would have been 13. (Yes, you can read it in a minute. Just indulge me, please, by reading this first.)

I remember this assignment being set for us quite clearly. Our usual English teacher was away so we had a substitute; a young woman we hadn’t met before, who’d obviously been drafted in at the last minute. I don’t remember the lesson itself, but for the homework, she had simply asked us to write a 1000 word story on the subject of “prejudice”.

I can remember the joy I felt at this. After our usual lessons, which would involve reading and analysing set texts, perhaps writing an opinion piece or even a creative piece based on one of those, it was liberating to be given a vague theme and told to come up with whatever we liked.

I still work best when given a theme, a word count and a deadline. But usually I’m writing non-fiction, for work. Reading this story now has made me pine for the creative writer I was then.

Yes, there is plenty wrong with it – not least the knuckle-chewingly dreadful naivety of a young author writing on a subject she knows nothing about. But it’s what’s right about it is precisely what’s missing from any writing I do now: I didn’t worry about anything – I just wrote.

And what’s more, if you can ignore the haphazard punctuation, slippery spelling and terrible paragraph control, it’s actually quite well-structured. It’s (more or less) got a proper plot curve! The scene is set at the beginning, with some flashbacks to place the character and introduce some tension that will need resolving. The journey continues to a climax point, whereby a conflict enables the character to put her own problems into context. And so the tension is resolved.

Okay, you can read it now. I’ve copied it out exactly as it was written then, dodgy grammar and all.

So over the next few weeks I’m going to try and channel my blithely confident 13 year old self and try and write short stories the way I used to. I’m going to pretend that, once again, my standard sources are dad’s Daily Mail, mom’s Women’s Weekly and whichever books from Hall Green Library’s “young adult” aisle I am currently reading. Who cares? I’m going to try not to worry about a thing – and just write.

I’ve been answering questions on formspring.me this week, as I’ve found it a good way to “just keep writing” (which would be a new year’s resolution, if I did that kind of thing).

The questions I’ve been asked so far have been quite thought-provoking. I’ve found myself writing a lot more little memoirs, on and off the site, which is the sort of writing I like to do.

But one question took me a while to answer: Of friends you’ve lost who do you miss the most? Am I alone in thinking this question was a bit… I don’t know, sinister?

Anyway. If you’d like to ask me a question – although if you ask me something as thinky as this I can’t necessarily guarantee an answer! – please go ahead.

You might have noticed the whole NaBloWriMo writing-a-blog-post-every-day thing has fallen by the wayside somewhat. Well, I’ve decided to take some advice from every mother ever: “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all”. Writing every day would be good, but if it means personal posts every day, then I’d just rather give it a miss.

Back in 2005 and 2006, this blog was more of a journal. The first post was about a disastrous holiday I’d just returned from, where my then-boyfriend and I spent most of the week arguing and the Spanish police carried out a terrifying raid on the next door apartment, involving guns and smoke bombs.

That was about as upbeat as the blog ever got.

Over the next thirty or so posts, I covered my struggle with a ten year marijuana habit that had turned into an addiction, my unhappiness with my job, the breakdown of my relationship, the deterioration of my uncle’s health and then his death, my dad’s heart attack and finally, the death of my beloved Nanna.

It wasn’t very chirpy.

Worse than that, though, it wasn’t helping. In hindsight, it was a cry for help at probably my lowest ever point in life – but hardly anyone read it and those that did couldn’t help me. Yup – only I could do that. Eventually I realised this and, against every instinct in my then-addled brain, started leaving the house again, forcing myself to be sociable, finding “hobbies” (hello, flickr chums!) and giving up the weed.

The last entry in my old blog, before I deleted it in January 2007, read:

It’s said that you should dress for the job you want, not the job you’ve got; wear a managerial suit and you’ll soon be the boss. If I’m going to show a face online, it should be the face of the person I want to be, not the person I am at the moment. If editorialgirl’s going to be online, she might as well be someone who inspires me.

Everything changes and I need to learn to live with that. Life is all about grief and how we handle it. And you don’t handle it by moaning to strangers.

So this is the (cliche and metaphor ladened) end of editorialgirl as you know her. No more “ooh, get me, I’ve given up weed”, no more “boo hoo, everyone dies”; just a CV, an eye on the web and some photos. From now on, editorialgirl is fucking ACE.

See you in my future.

And so here I am, in my future. Hello! It is no exaggeration to say that today (three years almost to the day since I last needed a smoke, by the way) I’m a completely new person. And I’m happy to announce that I don’t need a journal any more. I mean, I’ve got a handwritten diary for those moments where things go a bit wonky – we all need to “let it all out” occasionally – but I don’t write about it online any more.

This blog is still for me, but it’s for things I want to be pleased to look back on. Posts with a point.

Ooh, lasagne!

Well, not quite. Okay, so it’s only day five and I haven’t actually got anything to blog about… already.

I had great plans for this evening. I was going to get home from work and have a bite to eat, then my Flickr friend Steve was going to pick me up, to go to the Lickey hills and take some firework photos. Then I was going to come home and blog about it.

It didn’t really work out that way. Despite blue skies all day, as soon as it got dark (just after four o’clock) it started pissing down with rain. So after a brief text conversation with Steve we decided to knock it on the head and save the night shoot for another (drier) evening.

Instead, I got a bus from work straight to the pub. After downing a couple of pints, we went for tapas and vino.

I’ve got this far, so I might as well let you know what we had:

• peppers stuffed with couscous and feta
• pork in Malaga sauce (ie sherry) with pine nuts
• manchego cheese with quince jelly
• paella valencia
• quesadilla (cheesy flatbread)
• pork with garlic and paprika
• calamari
• aubergine in vinegar (tastier than it sounds)
• chorizo in wine
• a duck dish that never arrived, so doesn’t count

and of course, olives, bread and two lots of pathathath bravath.

So, um, there you go.

Tomorrow we’re off to Eastbourne for the weekend to see the inlaws, so my blogging will be brief for the next few days. Yay, seaside!