Quick! Hit the telephone box and clamber into your Lycra…

There is change afoot.

After conversations with my sister’s boyfriend, also a fellow WebTrader, I have decided to abandon my previously uncomfortable and awkward career title.

I am no longer a web designer, but a digital interactive artist. Well, in theory. Or something along those lines, it still feels like I have a mouthful of Chewits and I keep forgetting key parts.

It is going to take a while to get used to.

Yesterday, I said it to a client, a new face, someone who didn’t know my previous heavy burden of relentless rollovers. Initially, as the words fell out, I felt like an impostor. But she believed me, she even sounded almost impressed.

Yes, it may have a mild hint of wankiness about it, but I feel that if I’m going to make this change, I need to do it properly, embrace change, start anew. This won’t be the WebStress freelancer of old. I have learnt my trade, I have read, I have consumed, I have seen, I have listened. I have experience.

I’ve even asked my sister and Amy to help me sort my personal image so at least I offer a faint echo of the promises I want to achieve with my digital work.

After all, say it softly, tentatively, quietly, in case it isn’t true, in case I have time to deny it, or my conscience can ducktape over the words, after all I do know my stuff.

So, this ‘artist’ label is taking a little while to digest. I could spit it out, but I’m holding it there, like a piece of gristle, trying to swallow, down it goes, almost there. The ‘designer’ part of my previous label is how I was attacked, my Achilles heel. Surely the seeming upgrade to artist is opening my wound a little further, a little deeper, come poke your stick here, look at all this fragile space.

But it has been partly my fault. I am not trained as a designer, let alone an artist, and I have worn that label so openly, so prominently, that I might as well have been walking around with the critique equivalent to a piece of paper with ‘twat’ written on it stuck to my back.

If there’s one thing spending an uncomfortable £6 on monthly issues of Computer Arts have taught me, if you don’t believe you have talent, no one else will. Convince yourself, and convincing others will come naturally. Nothing but your own work makes you a designer or artist. It is a label, and you can choose how to fulfil your label. My degree, that aimless three years of not actually doing anything of any tangible value other than cutting things out and sticking them in project books long after the project has actually been completed to satisfy criteria, could to others be the qualification that I bestow upon myself. After all, its ambiguous title which has always deeply frustrated me could be used to my advantage. I am self-taught. But I am well read, I am well researched. Maybe, just maybe, that knowledge, that understanding, has seeped in, has embedded itself in the roots of my creativity. Maybe I just didn’t notice. Maybe it just needs nuturing, encouraging, in order to show its true colours.

So, in taking control and at the start of laying the foundations of what will be a lengthy preparation process, on Monday I tentatively started a design blog.

This blog was supposed to be separate from my identity as the WebStress, as thinly veiled as Clark Kent’s glasses maybe, but nonetheless a separation of identity that someone could only accuse me of, always with a margin of error. I told a few close and personals, passing over the url with the cautious words of treat me gently…this was the first glimpse into my creativity beyond the form and function of the endless web restrictions. A champion of accessibility, a guru of usability, abandoned in just free creativity.

God it felt good. The designs I posted over the last few days, ones that nearly didn’t make it, and then I thought ‘oh sod this’ and posted them anyway, refusing to let my restrictive guards hold back work to be lost forever, on a pile of endless work to be tweaked at some stage, at some time never, they were art. My art.
So I was making myself an artist, beneath the protective wings of a few supportive souls who I would bear everything to, who have seen my virtual scars and wounds, who have seen how a client can strip you, and pull and tug at you, with a quip, a comment, a throwaway remark that attaches like a leech and sucks and drains you, because you didn’t have the strength to fight back, you lacked courage in your convictions, you didn’t believe in yourself, you didn’t argue, you didn’t say ‘you’re wrong, I’m right’, you didn’t trust yourself.

Then this morning I logged on to blog, picking up my neglected WebStress lycra, tugging it on over my goosepimpled skin in the virtual changing room of Blogger’s dashboard.

But something unexpected happened.

Somehow, emerging into the sunlight of a new post, ready to whine about all things web in my alternative identity, I had forgotten to don my x-ray specs.

I had (momentarily abandoning my self indulgence of pretending I am actually a superhero instead of a web designer) merged the two blogs, through an upgrade to Blogger Beta using my gmail account, which I was using for my new blog.

This was almost entirely my fault (the almost being attributed to the internet in general, as I refuse to take the full blame despite it being entirely my own decision to enter those specific gmail details).

So there it was, my new beautiful pristine blog tainted by my grumpy, frustrated WebStress identity.

So I won’t be showing it to any potential clients then, I’m guessing.

But, I guess it isn’t so bad. This is who I am after all. This is me (although perhaps I should add some description about the items within the packaging – fragile, handle with care, just for now, just while the dust settles and the foundations form).

As long as I still get to wear the Lycra.

Repeat after me: A website does not equate to a pint and a packet of twiglets.

On Saturday, feeling thoroughly beaten, downtrodden, woe-is-me and all manner of other self indulgent feelings, I went out for dinner with my sister and my mum (isn't it funny how authors rarely use the word 'mum' and opt for 'mother' instead, sounding in someway more grown up, or even, if you're very posh, 'mummy' - why you are allowed to use terminology usually confined to the use of toddlers when you are of the upper classes I'm not sure, something to do with scraping the bottom of the gene pool and similar IQ levels perhaps...).

I started to expel my whitterings after several glasses of wine. My trauma did not fall on deaf ears, but I didn’t perhaps receive the sympathies that I had assumed would be laid upon the browbeaten WebStress.

My sister, firmly but gently, in the tone of voice reserved for loved ones who know you oh so very well and who know exactly what to do to sort you out, told me that the only person who could do anything about my work situation was none other than myself and that I might as well get used to it because that was the situation, things weren’t going to get better.

I whimpered, almost inaudibly, through her speech, but she has an infallible way of speaking so fluidly, so convincingly, without let up, in such a way that she could convince you that black was white after a five minute verbal sparring, where I am usually left sweating useless words from my tongue while she deftly whistles a tirade of watertight arguments. By the time she had finished, my whimpering had retreated back into its hole and was holding a pillow over its ears, and I was left with the facts.

That night and the next day I scrutinized my situation. I was restless, uncomfortable. I was struggling to see a way out. As far as I could see it up until this point, work was changing for the worse, I needed the money for the mortgage and not a precious penny left (I have Excel spreadsheets to prove as such), I couldn’t get a new job elsewhere unless they allow Newfys in the workplace (so far I have not found such a vacancy), my potential business partner was now training for a new job and wouldn’t be free until her debts were gone.

And I could do absolutely bugger all about any of the above.

But it had been there all along, staring me in the face. People had said it over and over to me, but it made me feel queasy, terrified, stressed even at the very thought. How could I cope again, after last time? Such long hours, being treated so badly, never being paid on time, charging my work for a pint and some Twiglets.

As Amy told me last night, in between attempting crucifix climbs and several unbecoming handstands at pole dancing, I can still have the pint and twiglets. But they’re just the bonus, not the WebStress’s bread and butter.

Everyone I have told this week has said things along the lines of ‘about time’, ‘good for you’ and other lovely supportive phrases. In fact the only person who looked concerned was mum (there’s that word again…) and that was coupled with the words ‘how are you going to pay the mortgage?’ which I managed to brush briskly away with a surprising amount of confidence and bubbled excitement.

No one surprisingly has gently mentioned the fact that when I was freelancing last time that I was so utterly miserable and stressed that I was generally a fairly hideous person to be around.

So there, I’ve said it, I’m going to freelance again. From A to B via such a rambled, tangled thought process that unravelled itself and fell out of me, outstretched in front of me, straight, clear, unfaltering, unbending.

But this time, I’m going to do it properly.

Sunday evening it dawned one me why I really hated it. Because I took everything so personally, because I let my stress and my worry consume myself. Because my lack of confidence in my work eroded my strength and stress seeped in through its porous walls.

This time I’m not going to let myself down.

Pole Position

Last week my beloved pole dancing class didn’t quite go to plan.

In fact, my pole dancing class resulted in me sobbing hysterically, unelegantly, in the office at the end of my lesson. Not slick, not smooth, and most definitely not sexy.

So there was I, attempting all manner of moves that I was failing spectacularly to do, looking rather like a monkey, but generally enjoying myself, my sister giving me tips in between laughing hysterically at my endeavours.

And then, as I attempted a climbing spin with about as much enthusiasm and style as a hyperactive clumsy child (making up for in persistence what I lost dramatically in form), Ms Harry Potter, from the next pole along no less, piped up and told me that what I had done looked ‘awkward, not right, wrong’ and all manner of other negative words for an uncomfortable length of time, all with disapproving undertones. She then ordered me, not exactly encouragingly, to do it again, presumably so she could pinpoint exactly what I was doing so badly just to make sure.

I stared at her, still hanging a reasonable distance up the pole at this point, mouth wide open in disbelief. My lack of response finally forced her to say ‘maybe its me’ without any hint or conviction, and actually rather a lot of ‘well if you want to look like a dick that’s fine by me’ peppering her Welsh drawl.

Until that point I had thought, genuinely, that all Welsh people were nice, purely because I didn’t think you could really say anything nasty in such a peculiar sing song accent that I have only ever really heard spouted in exaggerated tones by supporting cast members in children’s animation programmes.

I slid down the pole and collapsed in a heap of failure.

My sister asked me why I resembled the undead, having not heard the comments, and I whispered what I could. She shot Miss Potter an Oscar winning glare that only my sister can muster within a heartbeat, pierced with so much venom to fell an entire army.

In our class there is an unspoken etiquette. I have never attended a class that is as supportive as this. I have never attended a class where people clap your endeavours when you achieve something with a wisp of impressiveness. I have never attended a class where everybody knows each other, where everybody chats and laughs.

We are two to a pole, the only comments that we receive that aren’t positive are from our partners, who load their suggestions with so much constructiveness that you’d barely be aware that you’d actually done something wrong.

Our teachers are patient, kind, supportive.

It is the most I have enjoyed any exercise, ever, without any shadow of a doubt.

No partner of mine or teacher has ever, ever thrown so much as a negative comment for me to know how to fend off, let alone someone on another pole.

And don’t even get me started on the fact that she’s only been coming for three weeks and already appears to be gunning for Ms Pole Dancer of the Year, and frustratingly, unfairly seems to be in with a chance (however our teachers don’t appear to be quite as attentive to her talent as those at Hogwarts, although I have heard rather too many disturbing ‘excellent’, ‘perfect’ and ‘faultless’ comments from her direction).

I attempted to discard my shock and disappointment, refusing to have my enjoyment ripped away from me in the early stages of my class. But it had crawled under my skin, slipped effortlessly into my bloodstream and was now circulating swiftly around my muscles, wrapping itself around my concentration, constricting my movement, hampering my thoughts.

Of course, I should have waved away her comment, it should have slid off of me, I should have forced my annoyance and hurt into anger and productivity, instead of letting it manifest itself as worry, concern, failure.

This was something I was doing for fun and however much I’d like to think between the time that I am not actually pole dancing that I might be one day quite talented, that quickly evaporates when I am once again climbing like a baboon, with out turned feet and attempting chicken headed body waves and I just enjoy it.

By the time I was attempting to invert – that’s going upside down to Non Poley People - (having just watched Miss Potter effortlessly create the move for the first time), my thought process had divorced my muscle control and wanted nothing more to do with it while it tended its injured wounds, while my muscles were playing a similar game and had ordered a strike of anything mildly productive.

I tried, I tried, I tried. And failed. Again and again.

My sister, bless her patient soul, even helped me wrap my legs around the pole when they got anywhere vaguely close, but it was all in vain. My tears had broken their banks and I was turning into a snotty, crying five year old, abandoned amidst lots of gyrating, pole climbing ladies dancing to Addicted To Love.

The lesson ended and, while I had tried to hide my embarrassing outburst from everyone within the class, my teacher had noticed and coaxed me into her office where my face crumpled and I collapsed into a heap of tears and apologies.

They were wonderful, understanding and supportive. I left the class, feeling fragile, weak, in dire need of some alcohol and relieved the ordeal was over. On the drive home, humiliation, worry and embarrassment at my response seeped in and took over the place of my retracting tears.

My sister and Amy heaped gracious amounts of support on me in the coming days. I had held off saying anything too spiteful about Miss Potter’s achievements and natural talent until this point but she had given us all a ticket to the land of bitchiness and I was planning to exploit it as much as possible given the current circumstances. It had presented itself to me that she perhaps wasn’t the most perfect person on earth after all. And I was deciding to feel quite chuffed about that.
I had noticed during the lesson, when she had been partnered with another girl, much to her inward disgust I imagine as she usually attempts to martyr herself in having a pole on her own (despite this being the holy grail of the dance class), she looked disinterested between her turns, not encouraging her partner, not even looking at her partner most of the time, waiting until she could create her effortless magic on the pole.

She had lost the friendship of three co-polers swiftly and I imagined with that sort of behaviour she’d be losing others fast.

Saturday comes and myself and Amy attend a masterclass in the art of being sexy, stripping, lap dancing and all other things sluttiness in preparation for Valentines Day (when I will in fact be 3 feet under surrounded by plasters and pubic hairs in the swimming pool, and my boyfriend will be asleep in the car). If anything can inject a little bit of confidence into my self conscious, shy frame its this.

And it does. Our teacher, ex-lap dancer, ex-pole dancer, ex-stripper extraordinaire takes a cross section of women in a bizarre array of attire (I had opted for my usual gym clothes, one voluptuous lady had turned up ready to attack the art of stripping clothed in a silk dressing gown, stockings, high heels and fishnet gloves) and teaches us how to be sexy.

I cannot thank her enough. I am going to this week’s class a renewed woman.

A new hair cut, that I have not yet bonded with but at least it is an improvement on my previous hair style that harked back to being twelve years old, only without the fringe, when one or two of my closest friends had nick-named it a lion’s mane due to its unmanageable thickness and general unattractiveness. The ability to at least understand the concept behind the art of being sexy (for now I understand that it is an art and one that I can obtain a qualification in through, for the most part, standing tall, not sticking my feet out like a duck and not pulling stupid faces). And the sheer determination that circles around me since my spectacular failure last week.

I have even bought a DVD on the moves and am planning to erect a pole as soon as we move in to our new house (a sore subject and one I have yet to have the energy to blog about) so that my sister, Amy and myself can become Polers Supreme, all with a G&T in the wings.

I am nervous about this Thursday’s class. I am nervous I will fail myself by collapsing under her presence, about giving in, but I refuse.

It is a great shame that she has affected something I enjoy with such force, but a lot of that is what I have allowed her to do.

Winter's in the air

It is beautifully, blissfully, wonderfully absolutely bloody freezing.

So cold that I have two jumpers on, the central heating switched to constant and the frost on the grass is refusing to fade without a fight.

After our disturbingly warm winter, an unsettling reminder that Global Warming is not just an apocalyptic phrase or something reserved for 'other places', but actually has infected no longer impenetrable and now ever so fragile UK soils.

I am actually quite excited. If I squint out of the window, I can convince myself that the white tinges of the frost are actually a thin covering of snow.

Lawnmowers should not be coaxed from their tarpaulin hibernation in January. But there was my dad last weekend mowing, there was the uneasy smell of spring in the air. I should not be able to get out of bed without the physical snapping of frozen bones during mid winter. Daffodils should not be stretching upwards, effortlessly, without a struggle, and bathing themselves in warm sunlight in the first 30 days of the year.

Things are changing, and even the Daily Mail has seen fit to comment on numerous occasions (I have only heard it read out on the radio, I might add) on what may perhaps be something vaguely to do with Global Warming.

The world finally appears to be engaging itself relucantly into the realisation that what was once the future, and therefore not considered to be our concern and merely a prediction, is actually now, and therefore perhaps may be our problem after all and might perhaps possibly schedule in a discussion based vaguely around the topic sometime a week on Tuesday, when they will arrange another meeting to discuss the matter in more detail, sometime in late July, which will subsequently be rescheduled to mid November, if everyone's free.

Well, that was at least until Bird Flu reared its ugly head again, and now global warming seems to have been shelved while we again panic about that for a while.

Today though, after a winter of awareness and terror and worry and awakening, today briefly, in blissful ignorance, I am going to retreat into a little bubble and pretend global warming isn't happening, that it was just a bad dream, casually ignore the fact that it hasn't snowed all winter here and not complain about the cold.

The Waiting Game

Monday morning, my workload in the hands of someone else. It is like being abandoned by my instructor in a game of Nightmare but without the helmet and numerous keys.
Playing the waiting game.

It is a continuing problem of starting work two hours before my colleagues. Generally, I have managed to assign myself some task or other the night before but Monday mornings stretch out endlessly and drag their heels like a petulant schoolboy. I have had my breakfast, by far the most exciting thing about my morning, an hour early. I was disappointed at myself but hunger through waiting snapped viciously and disappointment withdrew into some dark whole for the five minutes while I ate. Now I don’t have breakfast to look forward to and I am suitably grumpy.

Everything is off-balance and I, with my beautiful Newfy breathing heavily, heftily beside me, in the warm, listening to the radio, am lonely. There you go, said it. And what do I do with that?

I am, I fear, middle management or at least lower-middle management aspiring unwittingly to be middle management (an unsavoury wish made not by my conscience but through my presence). I can write documentation about doing things, but I don’t appear to have the authority to actually implement these things, apart from for myself. I am a ‘kind of line manager’ as my boss so affectionately described me (I think I’ll omit that quote from my CV), however it’s all in the ‘kind of’. I have no authority but to listen and verbally react (usually with ‘yeah its shit isn’t it?’ in a sympathetic manner). I can suggest assignment of work, but can be swiftly overridden by everyone else above me (which appears to be an overwhelming percentage of the company).

Before Christmas I generated a hefty amount of work for myself by writing process after process, hoping to impress my seniors with my intuitiveness and proactive behaviour. While I now adhere by these very processes, I have noticed that another of our designers does not. I do not manage them, despite my hallowed position, apparently. I can give them a gentle nudge but that’s about it, and then I just appear like a whining colleague instead of a strong authoritarian figure striving to turn the department into a slickly oiled machine of creativity.

[pause to stroke Newfy’s belly]

But that is not the problem, merely a diversion, a momentary channelling of the real problem. Not being able to assign myself work, without generating process documentation that no one reads, is not the worst thing in the world. Frustrating, yes. But that is all, really.

I am the problem.

I am tired with it all, and I am tired of myself complaining, and I am tired of these empty, hollow promises I have written and thought and spoken over and over.