For the last six months I have been legally bound to not write on PennyGolightly.com and today is the first day that I’m free to do so again, so I didn’t want to waste the opportunity.<\/p>\n
It’s been difficult at parties and other events, people asking me what was going on, why I wasn’t writing. The answer is simply that I couldn’t.\u00a0Things were going quite well with this site in January and February this year. It was a lot of fun writing articles and chatting with like-minded people, the blog was mentioned a fair bit in the media and I was getting commissioned to write some interesting pieces.<\/p>\n
Then came a full time job offer – not something I’d been angling for, but it sounded good. The only catch was they wanted a clause in my contract that stopped me writing on this blog. There was talk of non-competition, there was talk of me bringing my blog content over to them. It seemed reassuring, so I signed on the dotted line.<\/p>\n
In reality it turned out to be a gagging clause, and I ended up with nowhere for my real voice. I was suddenly not free to do things I’m good at, or to have perfectly nice, pleasant, harmless chats with other readers and writers.<\/p>\n
Losing your outlet for your natural writing voice is devastating. Right now I feel like I’m recovering from a physical injury, like my throat has been slowly crushed. Like so much time and creativity has gone to waste.<\/p>\n
The saddest thing of all is that no gagging clause was ever needed. I have no intention of ever naming the employer. I will never make public their business plans, or write about how their employees behave, or how I have otherwise been treated. Other people have done this to them recently, but I take a rather dim view of that sort of behaviour. It just isn’t my style, and it strikes me as completely undignified and lacking in class.<\/p>\n
Anyway, here I am, six months down the line and in nowhere near as cheery a position as I was in this February. I’m looking at the tattered remains of my once-lovely site and wondering whether I have any hope of sweeping away the many cobwebs and breathing some new life back into her. I’m wondering whether it’s even worth trying.<\/p>\n
So, dear PennyGolightly.com readers – if you still exist – it’s over to you. Shall I try to get the old blog back up and running again? I’d like to hear your thoughts. If you’d like to express yourself publicly (oh what a thrill) then please leave a comment below, or if you’d prefer to contact me privately then you know the drill: penny@pennygolightly.com<\/p>\n
Would somebody please come and pick me up? I’ve landed.<\/p>\n
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For the last six months I have been legally bound to not write on PennyGolightly.com and today is the first day that I’m free to do so again, so I didn’t want to waste the opportunity. It’s been difficult at parties and other events, people asking me what was going on, why I wasn’t writing….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thrifty-living"],"yoast_head":"\n