I’ve been unhappy with my theme for a long LONG time. I’ve always wanted to make my OWN theme. My friend Yolospat is my inspiration – her theme is her own design. I’ve been wanting to play around in the theme garden and I just have never had the time, or the motivation to do so before now.

Cue a sleepless night with tech on the brain and here I am, awake at almost 6am, awake since about midnight, and I decide I am going to build my theme today. I have NO idea what is going to happen to me when 3pm trundles along and I am sleep-deprived. I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

In any case, there are areas of this theme that are still under construction, so while I will debut it right here on the fyr-light, I will ask that you PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE comment on THIS post if you find issues.

Or, alternatively, you can try adding a new issue at the google code homepage for the theme – yes. After “building” the theme, I went and made a google code page for it so I can share it if necessary.

…

Mostly, I made it so I can version it.

Want to try it for yourself? Download it here.

I WILL be continuing to work on this theme – so stay tuned for changes.

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I keep thinking I should go get a “real job”. The extra money would be awesome right now – I could pre-order the next generation nook! But I have to ask myself whether that is what I REALLY want to do. With FRG duties warming up and opening up a whole new world of possibilities for activity, will getting a day-job leave me with time to write?

On the heels of that, I ask myself if writing isn’t what I really want to do. I have no concrete idea of where my writing is going to eventually take me, right now I am just content to write, and write and write … I know I need a plan, goals, dreams … and I am not averse to a novel or other similar publication sometime in the near or distant future. That would actually be awesome. I realize, however, that I have a lot of work to do with my writing before I get there.

Maybe part of that realization is based in fear – can I write something that people will enjoy, want to read, make them come back for more? How do I deal with the possibility of getting a “real job” which takes time away from writing? Suppose I am offered a job … what then? Should I say “no thanks. I am working on my writing career” or do I take the job and use the money to invest in my writing career?

Of course, having worked a full time job in Kentucky before moving here with hubby, I know full well that an 40-hour-job is going to render me incapable of doing anything but just existing. And frankly, I don’t want that. I know this. Yet I still struggle with the decision – even though it is essentially already made. What does this decision say about me? Does it say I am determined to make something of myself? Or does it say I am making excuses to stay home and be lazy?

lazy |ˈlāzē| adjective ( lazier , laziest ) 1 unwilling to work or use energy : I’m very lazy by nature | he was too lazy to cook. • characterized by lack of effort or activity : lazy summer days. • showing a lack of effort or care : lazy writing. • (of a river) slow-moving.

I want to write but I fear what people – my husband first and foremost – will think of me if I insist I want to stay home and work on a writing career. I don’t want to be seen as lazy, or reluctant to work, or a deadbeat. I do tend to be somewhat of a procrastinator but I get things done. And one thing I have been noticing about myself for a week or so now is that I like to write! Lazy doesn’t fit someone like me who cooks, cleans, washes, writes – oh yes I write a lot – read, care for my husband and cats …

So, maybe my goal for now needs to be convincing myself and those who I consider closest to me that writing is a perfectly reasonable career to work towards. That it has merit, that MY writing has merit. Maybe that will be my newest short term goal: the point at which the decision to work on my writing career no longer has a cringe attached to it when said out loud.

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The experts all say that the key to good blog content is to focus on a particular area of interest. Find a niche and carve out your real estate. Well, sort of. I’ve been looking at my own blog and wondering how to improve it. Don’t get me wrong, most of my faithful readers love reading and keeping up with my daily ramblings. However, I find I want to reach out to more than just my close friends. I want to reach out and touch others who might be able to either relate to my situation or at least be able to learn something from it.

That makes my “area” a whole bunch of things: the web, being a military spouse, an unapologetic geek, an incurable bibliovore (ah guttaperk, you never realized what you started, eh?), amateur photographer on indefinite hiatus, housewife, technophile and last but least, Jamaican immigrant to the USofA. Of course I could just lump that all into “my life”, but how do you market that?

My guess? You don’t.

You see … I take great pleasure in writing about my everyday experiences. It’s a form of catharsis, a form of communication, a form of staying sane, a way to put my life out there so that I (and anyone else who’s reading) might catch the hint of some underlying lesson to be learned or passed on. An archive of experiences for my own and others to reflect on years from now. I am a complex person by nature and even if I didn’t want to keep my hands in every single pie I can find that intrigues me, I would still have too much shit to talk about.

No. I need my blog to remain my outlet, the one place I can say what I want, how I want, when I want.

I figured I needed to separate the parts of me: the serious blogger trying to teach the lessons she learned and the silly blogger who has to share the trivialities of life. I tried setting up a separate domain – and fyrfli.org was born. It was fine for a while. Then I started to feel torn. It started to be a burden to maintain them both. I spent more time trying to figure out how to cross-post without mistakenly posting my kitteh pictures on fyrfli.org or my discussion of military spouse benefits on just fyrfli.net instead of both. I spent more time with the tech of managing them both than I did writing. Eventually, I just gave up. fyrfli.org remained barren for about a month before I did something.

That something was to import the posts from fyrfli.org here, redirect all traffic from fyrfli.org here and spruce up this blog to look less like a whirly gig and more like a place of coherent expression – full of various subjects for your reading pleasure.

And by the way, in case you were wondering, ALL the fyrfli.org posts (and comments, I believe) are here too:

• Creature of habit to Military Spouse
• Ft Hood Shootings from my perspective
• Home of record
• Fall back .. now what?
• Halloween and me
• eReading
• Doctors and Hairstyles
• Reading and Writing
• Regards, your former twitter follower
• It’s those little things

So, while I continue to read and take advice from the pros on how to create the perfect blog, I will also continue to do my own thing. Who knows what could happen? Right now, I am not interested in copying the masters. Right now, I’m interested in my own shit … how to purge my head (and trust me, it’s ALWAYS full of stuff – more on that later) and maybe touch a few of you in such a way that you come back for more.

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So, how does it look? Looks good? I think so. Had to tweak a couple of things, and I miss having my pages along the header (which I will probably play with one of these days and get working anyway), but not a lot and this theme just kinda gels with my lighter-than-feather feeling these days.

So, it snowed last night and it’s been COOOOOLD … but it’s been nice, cos I had hubby here as a live blanket. We watched the snow accumulate and he FINALLY admitted that yea – this is a lot of snow for Kentucky. Course, all the idiots behaved like they’d never seen snow (we heard of at least 2 snow related accidents) but that’s ok cos we were home where they couldn’t have dragged us into their stupidity.

So I did some sweeping and mopping today and I think the kittehs are still a little pissed at me, cos I made everything smell different. But it’s ok, they’ll be able to change the smells back in no time … we’re gonna be gone for a week and I am sure our kitteh-sitter isn’t going to include house-cleaning as part of the services they’re offering. =)

So anyway, house clean and oh yea, hair washed (the grooming still to come roll eyes) and all that’s left is to make sure all our warm gear is washed and packed and hit the road on Friday morning before day.

So if you don’t hear from me again, well … life just caught up with me.

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=P

No comments please. I am bored with the lamplight theme.

Time for a change

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