Learning curve

Just over a fortnight ago,on a whim, I applied to do a top-up training course. Today, I completed the first week of intensive workshops. I'm pretty shattered and tattered but it's been most interesting, for a number of reasons.

The biggest shock to the system was learning to commute again after a 6-year hiatus. Although I'm naturally a very early riser, I fought daily against the excruciatingly loud digital bleep of my alarm clock at 5.30am. On at least 2 mornings I was sorely tempted to roll over and crash out again. I don't know why this is - my insomnia frequently wakes me that early and I'm happy to get up, stick the kettle on and crack on with work. But I dislike jumping straight in the shower, deciding what the hell to wear and putting my face on for the day while it's still dark outside. Catching a bus at 7.10 is anathema, sitting on a crowded train even more so. It's bearable - just - as long as I have a large carton of coffee, a paper and don't have to talk to anyone. By today, I felt I'd just about got the hang of things again - nicely in time to unlearn them.

People. I'm naturally sociable, but equally like my own company and frequently crave solitude. This week has taught me that freelancing from home can definitely turn one into a misanthrope. Working largely alone for so long meant I had to learn to work in a team again, something long since forgotten (and, truth be told, after my last spell as a staffer coping with a colleague who was literally bonkers and made my team's life hell, something probably best left behind). I had a huge midweek bust-up with one of the other trainees, inevitable under the circumstances. It was resolved next day but it's served to remind me that in Q110 I'm probably going to have to button the lips that are normally left to speak as bluntly as they care to.

As for the rest, it was hard not to be aware of the age gap between myself and the other gang members. Interestingly, I was way ahead of them when it came to the geek stuff. Although I'm probably an early adopter, I generally expect 20-summats to be ahead of me there. So it was with some surprise that I discovered that 10 years of blogging, plus proficiency in Facebook, Twitter and a bunch of other social media stuff put me furlongs ahead. I was bored and a little frustrated, therefore, during the first couple of days while we were taught how to blog and exploit social media platforms. In the latter half of the week, I did learn new stuff - how to make a digital movie and audio slideshow, for example.

For me, the most bizarre bonus was undoubtedly the unexpected friendship I seem to have struck up with an investigative journalist who dropped in to teach the group how to dig up information on the deep web. A lot of the workshop was, again, stuff I already knew from doing this kind of work in the past but we not only had that in common but also some other things. We swapped cards, Facebooked each other and before you could shout "publishing deal" we were mooting the idea of writing a book together. How weird is that? No weirder than spending 2 hours in someone's company and feeling like you've known them for ages.

Some other points of note: I've had so little free time this week that I've been coming home to a mountain of email that I've had less than 2 hours to sift through in the evening, dealing with the urgent ones and mainly deleting the rest before collapsing into bed. I failed to put the bins out. I cleaned none of the house. The boy was undoubtedly very unhappy at being locked in all day for 5 days in a row. I was so tired one night I overslept the next morning by an hour (yet miraculously still managed to arrive at the course only 5 minutes late - don't ask me how). I was also so tired that I cancelled several evening social engagements I should have showed my face at. Just how do ordinary people manage all these things? I have clearly lost the knack and I'm wondering just how I will cope with 3 months of this when a mere week was evidently such a struggle.

I have a month's respite now, a month in which I have 2 books to edit for clients, plus do my other regular freelance gigs and somehow psyche myself up for returning to the external workplace for 3 months. Scared? You bet. Cocky? Damn right. Somehow I just know I'll pull it out of the bag even though it will more than likely be through my usual combination of winging it, bluffing it and shitting it.

What I really want to know is where it will lead afterwards. But that's another story. So stay tuned...

Media Diet week 18

Press: after the holiday, it was good to get back into my normal newspaper routine. I've read very widely this week - on top of my usual Guardian/Sun habit (one serious, one tabloid), I also delved regularly into the Telegraph, Mirror and even (ssh!) the Mail while following the appalling Fritzl case in Austria. I've spent so much time reading I'm behind on my work. The world stops when a story like that emerges and there are just no words.

Blogs: sod the blogs this week - I was persuaded to sign up for Twitter instead. Seems like most of the hackosphere is tweeting away - I spotted many people I know and many I know of. I've had fun getting a little community going around my own tweeting and was quite flattered to see some top journos deciding to follow me. No doubt the excitement will wear off soon, like it did with Facebook, but I suspect I will find Twitter more useful for work. Talking of Facebook, a PR company I like very much (and it's not often I say that) held a groundbreaking 2-hour live chat there this week so small companies could ask questions about PR and the media. I swung by for a while and ending up getting an idea for a pitch and making a very useful contact.

TV/radio: I watched the first episode of The Invisibles on Thursday, expecting it to be like Hustle - stylish and witty. It wasn't. It was dire. What a waste of a talented cast. I missed two episodes of The Apprentice while away, except I didn't really miss it - this year's crew have failed to excite me yet and most of them seem fairly indistinguishable so far. Until Wednesday, when I saw what a cow Jenny Celery is, what a bully Lee is and what a pointless pin-up Alex is. Over in Ambridge, not much is happening as usual, but that's why I like it - it ambles along slowly and undemandingly, yet is compulsive listening. Ross the Red-Top Wannabe is back digging for dirt again and I just loved his blog on the Archers homepage.

Books: I've just started Val McDermid's Beneath the Bleeding. I'm several chapters in already and I doubt it'll take long to finish as McDermid is usually unputdownable. It's another of her Tony Hill/Carol Jordan thrillers so I'm expecting great things and so far it's living up to expectations. And I've a stack more crime fic to get through after this one. I'm a happy bunny.

Treading on very sensitive toes

Oh dear! It rather looks as if I have upset someone's carefully arranged Victorian costermonger's barrow...

Back in early August, I wrote about a very rugged online debate taking place within the SfEP over whether the organisation should have a presence on Facebook, to attract new members and publicise itself to a wide audience. The debate swiftly turned into something else - namely, how sinister is Facebook because it collects data on members. Those in favour of taking SfEP onto Facebook became very frustrated by attempts to derail what should have been a sensible discussion about finding new ways to secure the future of the organisation and expand its membership and renown.

Some of my own frustration spilled over into this blog and I used the term Luddites to describe some of my more stubborn colleagues. I make no apology for that.

Nevertheless, those SfEP members on Facebook banded together and set up an "unofficial" group there. It has already drawn at least one new member into the SfEP.

Today, someone calling themselves Faceless left a comment on that entry. Hmmm, it would have been fair comment at the time but leaving it until 6 whole weeks later was a bit pointless. I have been pondering the identity of Faceless, who clearly knows who I am but prefers to leave anonymous remarks on an out-of-date blog instead of picking up the phone and communicating directly with me. That's what I call gutless. And I'm 99.9% certain of Faceless's identity.

The most irritating thing is that same tiny band who would prefer that SfEP remain stuck in a time warp continue to stir up discussions about how awful Facebook allegedly is. Yet none of them have been on there to see it for themselves and criticise from a position of knowledge. Nor do some of them have any qualms about inventing facts - the SfEP Facebookers have been accused of using the group there to engage in "seaside postcard humour" and bring the SfEP into disrepute. Neither of these is true of course, but the detractors will never join Facebook to see for themselves and get their facts straight.

I would find it all quite laughable if it wasn't so pathetic. And if I wasn't being sent offensive mails by some so-called colleagues because of it all.

The SfEP is a fantastic organisation for editors and proofreaders. Our leadership works incredibly hard to boost the profile of our profession, to raise professional standards and to provide excellent membership benefits, among many other things. It's a real pity that the small handful who appear to hark back to some mythical golden age (when all editors tugged their forelocks, used blue pencils and quill pens, and drank lashings of ginger beer) seem so hellbent on stopping progress.

But, as one of my colleagues once said, albeit in a slightly different context, the gloves are off now...

Join me on Facebook!

Your humble wordsmith has now joined Facebook (again, for any sharp-eyed regular readers).

If you'd like to link with me on there, you can find my profile here.

Slack publishers, Luddites and lactic acid

Yesterday's gym workout was good. I came home feeling energised and managed to achieve more work in a day than usual. Today, of course, my shoulder muscles had seized up from lifting weights for the first time in 7 months and they ached from the release of lactic acid. I gave exercise a miss and focused on work. Or rather the lack of it.

Having agreed last week to edit a book and made it clear I would only work on-screen as opposed to on hard copy, I had still not received the electronic file at close of play yesterday. I was promised it would arrive by 8am this morning. By 10am, there was still no sign of it and I was getting twitchy. Emails were exchanged. This book is on a tight deadline, during which I also need to file copy with two magazines, so I was anxious to have as much time as possible in which to work on the manuscript. In the meantime, I couldn't start work on either of my features as I was still waiting for the striking posties to deliver a copy of one of the magazines so I could get a feel for it, and my interviews for the second mag were lined up for this afternoon.

This meant the loss of a day and a half in which I could do no work and earn no money. And it's not as if the publisher is paying me in gold bullion for this project. I was beginning to regret having said yes. The file finally turned up just after noon - they hadn't been able to send it because it was too big and it took them 36 hours to work out that it was because the illustrations were embedded in the document and needed to be stripped out. Duh. Sending files by email is not rocket science. Although perhaps it is to those who are not up to speed with using technology. But I would expect professional pre-press companies to take this sort of thing in their stride.

Bringing me neatly to my next rant. I mentioned Facebook on the email forum of my professional body, SfEP, the other day. I thought it might be useful for the SfEP to have an interest group on there so as to promote itself. I wish I'd kept my gob shut. I got rained on by the Luddites who couldn't see the point and had no interest in going on Facebook. No one was asking them to go on Facebook, only to support a possibility to promote the society to the wider world in a very busy and interactive environment. One particularly vicious poster suggested I was a pathetic creature who only has a social life on the internet. Well, no, far from it. I have a very busy social life, some of which is organised via the net. Honestly, these people probably think pigeon post is the most up-to-date form of communication...

Facebook popularity

Perhaps I'll have the last laugh after all.

After my earlier moan about being dumped on Facebook, I've got 5 new friends on there!

Who cares about one lousy hack with poor manners? Not I.

Facebook ignominy

Warning: rant ahead...

I feel humiliated. Having joined Facebook a couple of weeks ago (clearly in the fear that if I didn't I might be the only person left in the western world who wasn't on there), I started building my network of friends, family, colleagues and business contacts. Last week, I asked a fellow freelance to connect to me. This was someone I knew from an online forum for journalists and who I had helped out by being a case study for an article of theirs.

So we hooked up. Then this morning I discovered I had one friend less... [note to self: should that be fewer? I need coffee]

The problem with Facebook is that you can see, via your personal news feed, when someone adds you as a friend, but not when they dump you. However, being the amazingly intelligent and doggedly persistent investigative newshound that I am, it took me less than 5 minutes to work out who had decided I was no longer worthy of them... A simple trawl through the Facebook group for the mutual journalism forum we belong to was all that was needed.

What I don't get is why. A week ago, this hack agrees we should be part of each other's networks. Now, they think otherwise. I'd rather someone messaged me and said "thanks, I'm flattered you'd like to connect to me, but I'm only networking with people I know really well" than agree to be "friends", only to sneakily drop me off their Xmas card list a few days later. But this person has more than 150 contacts on their network, many of whom they must know as little as they do me. So maybe I offended them in some way? I don't know. What I do know is that some people have no manners.

So now I'm sitting here developing all kinds of stupid neuroses about why this hack dropped me, instead of focusing on work. I don't know why I care - it's only a cyber-networking website, after all.

At times like this I long for a cigarette. But I really ought to earn some money instead of fretting about something that, in the great scheme of things, is really very unimportant.

I succumbed...

After a huge flurry of posts today on one of the hacking listservs I belong, I caved in and signed up to Facebook...

I don't know whether I ought to be pitied for bandwagoning on the latest trend or I'm just being career-savvy.

Either way, I'm bored with MySpace - it's deathly quiet there these days. No one's PMed me in weeks and nothing else is happening on there.

Facebook, by comparison, is positively teeming with life. And it's not full of annoying 18-year-old sk8erbois and illiterates posting in txtspk. That has to be a good thing.