Separated

Changes! Changes! Changes 'round here! I officially separated "julesisaacs.com" from good ghost, so now one is a "professional design website" and the other is my personal blog, as it's always been, but now I don't feel so bad about bloating it with photos of my kids. And now I'm able to rant about stuff without the fear of a client raising their eyebrows. Not sure why I didn't just keep the two separate in the first place. Probably because I'm not really a pro-freelancer so much as I'm a "yeah, uh, I can design that, um, here's my web site? Oh, you just want me to maintain your Facebook? Yeah, uh, that's not really what I do . . . but banner ads, yeah, I do that . . ." kind of freelancer.

Maybe this means I'll post more often? Maybe? We'll see. I should be a more courteous blogger and leave comments on YOUR posts rather than fret over mine . . . I promise I'm reading, I've just become a lurker rather than a commenter these days.

If any of you followed good ghost or julesisaacs.com through Feedly, go ahead and unsubscribe from julesisaacs.com, because that post feed is now used as my gallery. All blog posts will now spew forth from this part of the internet. Hurrah.

Linked

On a lighter note from the previous heavy post, here are some snippets of projects I was working on last week. Business card, poster, blog header.

I recently got around to updating my LinkedIn account after ignoring it for . . . three years? A long time. Their emails were so frequent they were on the verge of being spam, and thus I chose to unsubscribe forever and ever. As a SAHM the need to keep up my resume hasn't been pressing, and as a freelancer my active online presence doesn't really need any help from LinkedIn. I do just fine working with indie authors and friends/family, and I'm not jonesing for a busy schedule because, you know, the Mom thing. If I consider working at a brick and mortar building again, it will be after the kids are in school.

But after signing up for an ipsy account, I checked out ipsy's careers page to see that they were hiring a copywriter (starting salary is probably more than my teacher-husband makes . . .) and they requested a LinkedIn profile. Ugh. So, with the future in mind, I gave in finally updated my profile. And who knows what that gleaming, dropping-off-the-kids-at-kindergarten future will bring? I used to say if I worked for a company again it would be with one that gave the same amount of side-eye to LinkedIn that I did, but they've proved themselves over the years to be worth their salt, so whatevs.

Do any of you do make up subscriptions? I used to do Birchbox, but wasn't terribly impressed as a lot of the samples were tiny. Meaning I could get the same thing by just being barraged by salespeople during a brief walk through Macy's. ipsy is supposed to include a lot of full size items, along with a make up bag each month. And they intentionally don't capitalize their brand name because that's just how artsy they are. Awesome.

Goodbye, Picnik

I'm trying to decide what I want out of this blog. Blog, what do I want out of you? What were you when you were born? What are you now? Will we still be friends when I'm 30? 40? Do you bring me joy? Do you challenge me? Have you replaced my private journal? Do you coax me out of my shell? Is that really what my hair looks like from the back? Should I get it cut? Layers? Bob? Perhaps some color? Ombre?

Got a little lost there.

For anyone bemoaning the demise of Picnik, I'd like to recommend Gimp. It's not as user-friendly as Picnik (there's no button directly titled "Blemish Fix"), but it's a free Photoshop-esque program and I use it for all my photos. It's totally worth the time it takes to play around and get to know it (and you can still fix all your blemishes if you so desire). Check it out here.

Or, and I'm not sure why this hasn't been expressly stated instead of merely hinted at, Picnik is simply being moved into Google+ and retitled Creative Kit, a transition that's been happening for some time. So if you haven't succumbed already, create a Google+ profile (you don't have to replace your Blogger profile . . . I linked and then unlinked them to make the process easier as far as transferring info went). When you're all set, select or upload the photo you'd like to edit and in the top left you'll see "Creative Kit." Enjoy.

BUT not every feature on Picnik has been moved over to Creative Kit - such as the Frames option (for making those round photos bloggers love so much). Perhaps that's why there aren't banners anywhere annoucing Creative Kit as the savior of Picnik . . . but it's rumored that all the other features will move over now that Picnik is officially closed. The rumor mill also suggests Picnik will soon be offered on CD for purchase. So, hmm.