Many years ago, when the Nailtech mailing list from Beautytech.com was the hippest place to be on the Internet, one of our members retired.

Her names was Heather and she had been doing nails for a hundred years. She was pretty well known in the industry — one of those names you would see often in magazine articles and such.

When she announced to the mailing list group that she was giving it all up to become a dog groomer, many, many, many of us were aghast.

Why on earth would a successful, established nail tech with a full clientele just quit?

Her response (and I am paraphrasing here) was, “I’ve been staring at the same people for 25 years and quite frankly, I’m sick of looking at them.”

I remember reading those words in horror! What I would have given at that point in my career to have had a full book of loyal clients. I could not conceive of ever being in a position where I would be “sick of looking at” my clients.

Well, Heather, I’ve been looking at the same people for a number of years myself now. I have a much better understanding of how you felt.

Isn’t that about the saddest thing you’ve ever heard from a nail tech?

And I feel robbed. For 22 years I absolutely loved my job. I looked forward to getting back to work on Monday. I looked at everything else in the world around me through Nail Artist Eyes.

Now all I want is to be able to take two weeks off at a time. Maybe four.

I’ve been talking a lot of smack, but I actually still like my job. I still like my clients. I’m just out of balance between the demands of the salon and other things I want to do in my life. I’m working on getting that balance back.

This blog is one of the things that has to go. It doesn’t really take up much time, but the obligation to it is stressing me out.

You all know where to find me: I have the Facey Spaces and the Tooter birds and the Instagraham Crackers. I even have a Tumblr and a Flickr account. All you have to do is click your heels together three times while typing my name into the Googoo Cluster and you’ll find me.

Hey! Maybe I can spend more time updating my blog — on my website — now!

And if you really, really, reeeeeeaaaaallllly want to know about the sleazy romance writing, there’s a Facebook Page called “Magpie Press” where I occasionally blast out some info for my stuff as well as some other peeps’ books. Cuz the indie author crowd is just as warm and snuggly and supportive — and catty and backstabbing — as the nail industry.

But mostly, you can find me in the salon. Covered in dust and glitter. Smiling and filing with a Starbucks iced caramel machiato next to me, telling tall tales and talking smack about the BF.

Cuz my job rocks like that.