Friday 9 July 2010

Heat wave

I'm languishing under the UK heat wave. It's the hottest day of the year, and there are public health warnings. I'm sticking to chilled coffees and to staying out of the heat. Our move didn't come one moment too early, since the new hhouse copes so much better with heat and now we have the garden to catch some air in the shaded areas in the back (decking, trees, roses, it's pretty damn nice).

Weekend will see me have to go shopping. I need a bunch of work shirts and a new pair of shoes. I just destroyed my last pair of work-suitable black leather shoes. Damnation.

I'm currently running a writing workshop, which, ironically, means I'm not writing myself (funny how that works). I'll be back to normal next week, but I'll make an effort to write at least a little today and a little more over the weekend.

Since my duties increase and I get more and more things to do, I assume I'm doing good in the new job. I have to edit a couple freelancer features and wrote two small features about pretty complex regulation stuff, so I think I'm set up well to write my long feature of 3-4k next month. It's easier to care about something that's more complex and keeps challenging you than an industry that runs very much along very similar lines. I'm not sure I fully grasped how perversely, deeply bored I was in the old job.

Also got invited to a couple chats with lawyers and then the World Sugar Conference thing in Cambridge this month. There's so much stuff going on that I could run from event to event and never cover it all. Pretty awesome, actually.

Will likely fly out to Moscow and New York this year, and then to the Windy City, too. Should be fun and I'm looking forward to that. Will also mean I'll get some reading/reviewing in in the meantime, as well as images and people and time for the writing.

It does seem like I'm turning into one of those famous journalist/writers. That was something I never wanted to be - but I think it is my niche and I'll be doing OK there. No more industry-hopping, no more fears I'm not doing what I should be doing. I'm enjoying myself and life can only get more awesome from here.

3 comments:

  1. Congratulations, Aleks on the nomination. Well deserved to be sure.

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  2. Famous journalist/writer, huh? Just don't leave us behind in the dust, will you, but bring back lots of future story fodder from your travels.

    Off to check out Jessewave.

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  3. @Elaine: That's not how I meant it... :) I meant the combination of writer/journalist is "famous" - so many writers mad their living writing for newspapers.

    I'm OK without fame. I just want to write, really.

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