easily distracted by shiny things…
Posted in writing on Apr 8th, 2010
Today I made an interesting decision. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, but today seemed like the right time. I telephoned HM Revenue & Customs, and told them that I was no longer self-employed. I have one last tax return to fill in and one last bank account to close, and that’ll be [...]
Some of you may know that I’ve been looking for a job for some months now. Well, as of this week, I’ve finally found one! I’ll be working as a Website Administrator for a local information service. Between three days at work and two days volunteering at the Museum each week, that isn’t going to [...]
I keep seeing this venn diagram popping up all over the place. It belongs to Bud Caddell, and accompanies an interesting post on how to be happy in business. I ventured up into the loft the other day, to dig out some coat hangers to take the skirts and dresses down to Tiger Lilly. This [...]
Posted in culture on Aug 28th, 2009
I’ve just spent a large chunk of this afternoon transferring all my blog feeds out of my email account and into Google Reader. Now I have 82 blogs with 601 posts to catch up on, which could take a while! However, this much better than looking at my Inbox and seeing 2097 messages, and not [...]
Posted in writing on Jul 20th, 2009
So, the exciting new thing that I’ve been working on? It’s arrived! I’ve just started a second blog, which is (mostly) about aromatherapy. All that’s there at the moment is a great long introduction and the beginnings of a Frequently Asked Questions page, but I have plans… oh, such plans! The idea is that I [...]
Posted in FAQ, inspiration, writing on Jun 26th, 2009
I started working for myself for two reasons. I went to an event with a lot of independent traders, and came home thinking “I could do better than that”. And I did. For a while. I became frustratingly and unpredictably ill. Working for myself gave me the flexibility I needed to work as much as [...]
Posted in culture, inspiration, writing on May 31st, 2009
Image © Tom Hunter I was reading the Big Issue yesterday, and suddenly did a double-take when I saw this picture. It’s from the “Travellers” series by Tom Hunter, who has several current exhibitions in London and around Europe. When I was at University I harboured a sort of a romantic notion that I would somehow land [...]
So, we’re in a global recession. A couple of months ago I had a surprising number of orders cancelled, all at once. Most of them were for party dresses that people simply couldn’t afford to pay for any more. Never mind that the dresses were going to be hand made from beautiful fabrics, one of [...]
This week I got myself into a terrible state trying to write up my CV for the Museum of English Rural Life. One of the difficulties with being self-employed is that it’s often necessary to take part time or seasonal work, to make sure you have some form of income during those quiet patches. Unfortunately, [...]
Posted in culture, inspiration, shopping, writing on Mar 31st, 2009
This week I am in love with the seemingly random interconnectedness* of things. The other day I joined Twitter. Havi Brooks sent many people my way with her tweet (thank you!), one of whom was Randomling. She turned out to be the housemate of Miss Alice, who’d put me on to both Havi and Twitter [...]