One Word, Two Words, or Couldn't Give a ...?

Most people who know me, know that I’m one of those annoyingly pedantic people who has to work really, really, hard NOT to point out every misused or absent apostrophe, misplaced hyphen, misspelt word, and...

Well, enough to say that I’m particular about punctuation and, after so many years in the writing world, I believe that it’s possible to tell the age and nationality of most people simply by the way they use it, especially commas and hyphens. Which is why I’m in such a quandary about the word - or words - house-sitting.

I can remember three years ago when we started out on this journey that I was stuck with the same dilemma. Is it house-sitting, housesitting or house sitting?

Obviously, way back then, I decided to opt for the hyphenated version. A choice most likely due to my traditional English education. Plus the fact that housesitting was too long and new to be acceptable without a hyphen, while house sitting was too new a word to be split in half, risking the chance that readers didn’t know that the words were invisibly joined.

But now, things seem to have changed. Not so much with my logic, but with technology, keyword searches, and laziness, I expect. After all, if you have the choice of typing the word into your phone with or without a space against having to click to another screen to find the necessary hyphen, which are you going to pick?

I can see the reason for and against each spelling. But what really concerns me is, is my original, hyphenated spelling old-fashioned and due to become dated? Should I be ready for it to threaten the chances of my house-sitting courses, sites, articles, and such, being found online, because search engines won’t pick up the spelling? Perhaps I should even consider taking the hyphen out of everything I've created before there’s too big a pile of things to alter.

So I’m genuinely interested, what’s your thought? 

One word? 

Two words? 

One word with hyphen? 

Or couldn’t give a …?

I’d love to know.

The Life Of A Digital Nomad

Ever since I heard of it, I’ve always loved the idea of being a Digital Nomad. The phrase inspired in me a sense of limitless freedom, creativity and unique outlook on the world. Of course, I hadn’t heard of the phrase until a few years ago. In fact not until somebody had already introduced me to the phrase ‘house-sitter.’ And no doubt if you’d mentioned either of them to me the year before I’d have laughed in your face. 

Yet here I am, three years on, comfortably living the life of house-sitting Digital Nomad, and still loving the concept. Who’d have guessed? 

So why am I rabbiting on about this? Well… I’m hoping it will kind of explain what I’ve been up to - and more to the point, why there haven’t been any posts for a while. Truth is, I’ve been working on my digital nomadicness. 

As most of you will know I’ve been having fun creating online courses for years now - mostly on writing up until this point. But as the months have passed it’s become more apparent that there’s something else I had to do, but… typically… I just didn’t know what it was. But now I do (YAY!) and that’s what’s been distracting me from writing the blog posts (for which I’m sorry, by the way). 

In the past month I’ve working on supporting, informing and inspiring house-sitters coming to Australia. (Yes, I know it’s a pretty obvious shift in direction, but somehow I’d missed it. DER!) Steve and I have, after all, had an overwhelming success with house-sitting so it seems only fair to share what we’ve learned. 

Of course it doesn’t mean that we won’t keep doing all we’ve been doing up until now, it just means there will be more! So now, along with everything House-sitting Life, there’s also a House-sitting in Australia website, blog, Facebook page, online courses, even house-sitting TShirts, stickers, notebooks in my Quirky Bees store… and that’s just for starters. I’m even hosting an All About House-sitting discussion at the Bodhi Tree Bookstore Cafe in Mt Hawthorn, on Friday 14th December (at 2pm if you’re interested). 

So… if you’re wondering about becoming a house-sitter (or know somebody who is) check out everything House-sitting in Australia and stay tuned for more. 

Well, I hope that explains my absence, apologies again, and here’s hoping the next blog post won’t take so long to eventuate. Now I’m off now to go create something Digitally Nomadic. What do you reckon, should I go work in the colourful lush garden or whilst lounging on a comfy sofa?