If you google it you’ll find it everywhere.

But you’ll notice that down near the bottom of the page, there’s a link to Don’t Stay In.

That’s not me.

There’s another smileykt out there, and every time I sign up to a website and see the words ‘That username is taken’, I feel like a small part of my soul* has been stolen.

It doesn’t happen often. And I can’t say I’ve ever tried to sign up to Don’t Stay In.

My name wasn’t always smileykt.

Back in the early days of the interweb** it was simply KT, and that was enough.

But oh no, two letters may be good enough for Scrabble, but it’s not good enough for Twitter, or IMDb, or well, anywhere. (I would have gone on, but well, you know.)

It’s probably for the best that I had to add on the smiley, as a few years later KT Tunstall would have come along and ruined everything.

But whenever I am blocked by this imposter smileykt, I feel like I should get in touch – why would they have chosen the name in the first place? I’m sure MyFitnessPal wouldn’t have been the first place this 25 year old female chose to stake a home on the internet, and, well, I’ve got most other places locked down.

Perhaps she’s got different usernames for every website – do you? I couldn’t handle it…different passwords yes, but usernames too? I’d need to get them tattooed.

And I don’t think she’s even that smiley.***

* not that we have a soul

** I’m old

*** Actually on her Don’t Stay In profile she’s got quite a big grin. But that’s just one tiny bit of evidence, if I google her I just find myself.

What have I been up to since then?

Well, I’ve been working. Pretty much non-stop. I am the poster girl for freelance newsreading.

But surely you can find the time to write a few words every now and then? Surely that’s what journalists do?

Yes, but the other thing that broadcast journalists do, is remain impartial. I wholeheartedly believe in that, but it does make expressing opinions off air difficult too. Well, in public anyway. And I am quite an opinionated lady – hence the lack of writing a few words every now and then.

Of course, the chances of the listeners of the remote communities I tend to broadcast to stumbling across my personal Twitter feed, or my personal unnamed blog are slim, so perhaps I should just be brave…

One day. One day I shall step over the line. And that will be the day I enter politics. You may want to cover your ears.

Hard at work

Staff journos often ask me what I do when I haven’t got a booking. I think there’s probably a perception that I sit at home waiting for the phone to ring. 

Now, there’s an element of truth in that – it’s hard to beat getting a phone call/text/email from a news editor in the ‘yay!’ stakes. But after three months of freelancing, and in this current climate (as they say) there’s been a lot of time that could’ve been spent twiddling my thumbs, or more realistically watching Diagnosis Murder.

I’ve found though that I have very little monging time. If I’m not working at a radio station I’m generally working on other skills, like web design; generating and responding to commissions; looking for job opportunities…and then sometimes I’ll take pleasure in the fact I’m not working 9-5, 5 days a week, and sit and knit while watching Smallville.

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