BD Wilson

One of my favourite places to write is mall food courts. It’s not because of the people-watching, though that can be fun, but I’m not really sure what it is. Maybe it’s grounded in familiarity, having done it for so long  on breaks and while waiting for friends.

I try to write in the public library, but I find when I’m there the background noises distract me. For example, the man behind me yesterday who alternated between reedy whistling and murmured whispers. I hope the whispers were reading aloud his book, but I have no explanation for the whistling.

They’re little things, really. But people coughing, walking by while they browse the books, or holding conversations (a normal volume) are impossible for me to ignore in the library.  And yet, in the middle of a crowded mall, nothing phases me.

I can ignore the kids who seem incapable of tlaking below a shout. I can ignore the line of people waiting at McDonald’s. I can even ignore the background buzz from having so many people in one place.

I don’t know what the difference is. Perhaps it’s because I expect noise at the food court. Libraries, however, I still expect to be quiet, though the expectation seems to be growing outdated more and more.

Rather than continuing to expect them to be so, I should probably just grab my books and go across the street to work in the food court.

I don’t think my life is all that busy, but there are times when I think it’s fully booked. By nature I’m a creature of habit, so I appreciate routiene. It does mean I tend to have regular activities most nights, though. It can be hard to convince myself to make space in the schedule for new things, or things that have fallen off.

Somewhere along the line, I’ve let myself fall out of the habit of writing every day. Other interests have moved in on the time I used to have allotted for it. (WoW, you evil addicting and enjoyable past time!) I keep telling myself I need to change back, but I haven’t been successful at it.

But, as they say all too often, if something is important enough, you make the time. If I can come home early to log on and fight the Brewmaster, I should be able to come home early and get some writing done. So why haven’t I done it?

Finding time means stealing it from other activities, yes, but I should still do it. As much as I don’t want to give anything up, this is important.

I need to start listening to myself for a change.

I moved my Web site onto a WordPress platform quite some time ago. I didn’t intend to use the blog yet, I just wanted to be able to change the theme whenever I wanted. Usually I like consistency, so it was an interesting motivation, but I went with it. Of course, I was using code from Feedburner to display some of the entries from my LiveJournal, and while it did this well, I had to update the style sheets every time I changed themes, so it didn’t happen often. Sometimes what worked in the last sheet worked in the new one, and sometimes not. It involved a lot of tweaking, which took away from both the convience of changing the templates, and in using Feedburner to display the entries in the first place.

Having my LiveJournal gave me a place to post the randomness that makes up my blog, and I didn’t really see a need to mirror it anywhere else, even if I did become increasingly fond of WordPress the more I used it. It just seemed redundant.

Well, it appears that I shall just have to accept redundancy.

Recently, I’ve been adding little pieces of customization to the template for Wilson Karate and the current issue of Niteblade. Not much, but enough that I began to see how I could replace the Feedburner code with template lines, if the blog was hosted here instead of LiveJournal. It brings it together in a way I appreciate.

Of course, I’ll still have to make the changes every time I change templates, but it should involve less tweaking now. Once the initial tweaking is over, that is. I still have a little change to make to the welcome page, but I think I’m close.

Now that I’ve made the change, I should begin my random posting again. Especially since this is something of a new toy again, and I love those.

The September, 2009 issue of Niteblade Magazine, Dead Teenagers at Make-out Point, came out this morning.

I’m a little biased, but I think it’s a great issue. Check it out!

~ Web Version ~ Downloadable PDF ~

(And yes, I did totally rip-off ‘s format for the links there ^_^)