Subterranean Homesick Alien

You three regular readers might have noticed that things have changed around here. The former blerg layout that I was using seemed strangely antiseptic to me, so I spent the two hours last night pointlessly sifting through free templates and code on the Internet only to get fed up with the crap and opt for a stock blogger background image and stock blogger layout that was exceptionally fun to tweak (no it wasn't).

I wanted to create a blog, or blerg as I think I'm calling it from now on, that both textually and visually represented who I think I am.

First off, I'm not a coder, or a web designer, or any of that, because if I were, I wouldn't have a stock photo of the Houses of Parliament slapped behind whatever nonsense I write. I got frustrated and a little bored, and more than a bit stiff from sitting on the couch squished by two dogs, so I stopped looking. Ergo, I ultimately opted for an image that makes me happy. Perhaps I'll change that someday, too, though I do enjoy the color scheme. Secondly, in the 120 minutes I burned sifting through blog templates, I discovered that I loathe 99.9% of the free layouts out there and the .1% I do like were in xml and I was just not willing to deal with that shit. Patience is not a virtue with which I have ever been blessed.

The thing is, I was searching for a blog that was clean, subtle, but without the coldness or sterility or grunge explosion that makes up so much of the trends in design happening in the last few years. So my other options happened to be fluffy, flirty, cutesy, crafty, girlie templates that almost all had the shared descriptor of "whimsical." If there is one thing I am not, aside from bubbly, it would be whimsical. Sure, Alice in Wonderland is one of my favorite books, but if you read the novel rather than drink the Disney Kool-Aid, it's not exactly all on the up and up. And Lewis Carroll was probably a pedo, anyway, which is horrifying.

At any rate, I selected an image that makes me at once nostalgic for a time and a place that probably wasn't as good I would like to believe it was, but better than I feel right in this moment, and sometimes a little melancholy is ok. I don't know if it's normal to feel homesick for a place that's not really home, and possibly never was, but there are times when I want to go back and do it over, do it better, and find myself a permanent niche in the city that still holds so much of my heart.