Goodbye, OAN
A few months ago, I blogged about acquiring my domain. Now comes the flip side.
Having paid $25 for the right to write on lesliegura.com, I chose recently to save a similar amount by saying goodbye to an old friend that helped me at a tough time in life.
I’ve let go of openallnightediting.com, the domain I began in mid-2010, when I recognized that my new boss at the Winston-Salem Journal wanted me gone and it was only a matter of time. Through Open All Night, which morphed into OAN during a later redesign, I was able to attract freelance work that brought me a chance to try new things such as editing non-fiction and fiction, doing marketing campaigns, and copy editing technical publications.
Some fun facts about Open All Night:
First, the name came about because I was enamored with a Live in Dublin version of a more bleak original Bruce Springsteen song from the Nebraska album. I was thinking about career metamorphosis and the fact that I’d work for money at any hour, day or night, when I chose the name.
Second, the business card image with this post is courtesy of my friend, Richard Boyd, who brought my concept to life then just as, years later, he created the cover of my book, Unwrapping.
Finally, the image of the OAN card is a true original: about two years after I ordered a box of 500, I had to spend some of my very modest freelance income ordering new ones because the email service I used at the time, Clearwire, was bought out and killed by Sprint.
The work that came my way via OAN supplemented my income for years, in particular during the time when I struggled after being fired by the Journal (the new boss finally “got me” in January 2011; which is a tale in itself since she “got got” herself three years later when the paper was sold, thereby saving me a similar fate, no doubt).
The bottom line is that OAN was a lifeboat for me. Since starting my new career as a clinical mental health therapist, though, I haven’t been seeking freelance work. I’ve gotten my fill of writing with my fiction and have no particular desire to edit anything other than my wife, Terrie’s, wonderful food blog.
And so I bid adieu to OAN. Perhaps someone with a need to work, and the mindset of doing what it takes 24/7, will conjure their own website out of openallnightediting.com.