The upside of losing your work

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Turning around an OH NO moment

Basically me, on Wednesday

Dear all,


I hope this finds you in good spirits and even better health.


A warm welcome to our newcomers: Anna, Else-Marie, Basilio, Elizabeth, Yoshiko, Stefanie, Niam, Beatriz, Yuki, Animesh, Cassie, Christina, Eleanor, Amanda, Elayne, Jennifer, Kalliopi, Sarah, Kate, Paul and Tamara.


A very special shoutout however is reserved for the gentleman with the highly unusual first name: "Alex SIXTOWNS GIN". I suppose he must think that LUXTRA lovers are also gin lovers. Smooth marketing tactic, Alex* ;-)


For the benefit of the newcomers, this newsletter aims to discuss topical sustainability-related er... topics... in a fun and engaging way. Well... that's always the plan, at least.


I've just refreshed our newsletter archive to make it more appealing in case you want to delve into previous topics. Some of the most popular articles are Up and Coming Materials: Part I and Part II, and the difference between real and vegan leather.


*Alex is the boyfriend of a close friend, and is very cheeky.

Speaking of cheeky: Popi is back!

Did you know she even has her own hashtag?? #popicop

As I mentioned last week, LUXTRA is not partaking in the Black Friday - Cyber Monday discounting madness, but rather donating 100% of our profits over the 4 days to The Orangutan Project. They support orphans like Popi, above, who lost her mother at an exceptionally young age due to land clearing for palm oil. I love that last week, one reader replied "Popi for Prime Minister", and another person mentioned they had donated to TOP even without purchasing a LUXTRA product (Swen, we do do mens products you know!).


Here's to more #POPILOVE in any case.


We've had a great response with orders thus far ... so you have 2 more days people!* ;-)


But now onto this week's subject: dramas and silver linings.


* Campaign ends Monday Nov 30, 2021 at 23:59 GMT

The external hard drive: it all starts here...

So this week, I had a deadline, already once extended. By Thursday I needed to submit a 1400 word article to CEO Today on the future of sustainability in luxury fashion. Because I, for one, do NOT perform well under stress, I took that to mean Wednesday EOP [end of play, for the boomers].


Writing takes me some time. And there is no way I'm going to put my name to a piece of slap-dash OMG-we-need-to-pump-out-content-to-boost-our-SEO-ranking fodder.


My co-working space is now uproariously busy on a Wednesday. I found a place near reception where I was no longer listening to some pour soul being interviewed in an open-plan lounge area, and plunked myself on a couch for some "peace". Whoever they are testing these noise cancelling headphones on, well... they need to hire me and run the tests in my co-working space. Mine do absolutely zilch.

I've used this gif before, but it's hard to beat.

So this super un-ergonomic couch was pushing my poor back into an ever poorer posture, but at least I was able to furiously type out the required word count without unwillingly eavesdropping into the monologue of some man with a loud booming voice. Woot woot! I was done.


Well... so I thought...

You get the gist...

I use an external hard drive for my work (long story), and because it's getting a bit old, it often disconnects. In my eagerness to dispatch my copy, I hit save, closed Word and tapped out my email to send the document. I went to upload it and saw lots of red lines and unfinished sentences in the saved file. I guess it didn't save  after all....


So by this point, you might be thinking "yes, yes, poor you, Jessie, but we've all been there. You don't need to write a whole newsletter about it."


And you'd be right. I need to get to the point.

You get the gist...

When I bemoaned my bad luck to friends, they asked me incredulously why I wasn't using the Cloud. There are heaps of companies offering cloud services (see above).


The reason I have been relying on my old hard drive is that I don't trust a lot of companies to hold my data and I don't want to make a lot of these Big Tech businesses richer. But now that my luddite tech habits have been called into question, I needed to find a Cloud solution that would fit in with my highly ethical boundaries.


Dropbox seems to be the solution so far, but I don't love it. So in next week's newsletter, I'll be making some suggestions about alternatives to Big Tech (Cloud services, email providers, search engines etc) that I'll be trying and testing, in case you too want to move away from some of these mammoth (sometimes predatory) companies, but don't know where to start.


Oh and suggestions are always welcome. If you have any recommendations, I'm all ears.

 

Until next time!


Jessie x


Founder | Wannabe Big Tech Crusader | Proud B Corp-er

Jessica Kruger, LUXTRA
Jessica Kruger, LUXTRA

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