Bottled Sky

…hello, Bottled Sky! I now have my very own domain, a gift from Kathy, Ivy, Tin, Albert, and Derek. Aside from the domain name, they also paid for an entire year’s worth of hosting. Thanks so much, you guys! Tracy of Katgyrl.com also deserves a huge thank you for hosting me for six long years. That’s an eternity in web time! She is made of pure awesome.

As you can see I’ve basically kept the same layout, making just a few minor adjustments to reflect the change of title. I also cleaned up the content a little and installed WordPress. I encountered problems while attempting to import my Blogger posts, so I ended up having to manually add every single entry. I’ve never been more thankful that I don’t blog that often, haha! It sucks that I can’t import my old Haloscan comments. I definitely have no plans of doing that manually, though, so I’m just going to have to let it go (Edited on 2/13/2007: Scratch that. My “OCness” got to me and I ended up transferring the comments anyway.)

If you have me in your links or bookmarks, don’t forget to update them. And please let me know if you find any bugs. I’m still very new to WP, so there’s a huge chance of errors lurking in the shadows. (Cue ominous music.)

Happy new year, everyone!

In its nearly six years of existence, this site has come up in many weird search queries (as I’m sure is the case with most blogs). These are some of my personal favorites:

• mold retardant for meat - eh?!
• hitchhiker whore - sorry, no porn here
• monster energy drink girls thong photo - no thong photos either, I’m afraid
• socked feet - someone has a foot fetish…
• shoe worship - understandable considering my footwear obsession
• life is too short, buy the shoes - you said it, sister!

It’s only natural, however, that most of Skylight’s search engine hits come from people looking for, well, actual skylights. It’s silly, but sometimes I feel just a tiny bit guilty for misleading those people. Serves me right for naming my site after a glorified window.

I began writing when I was five years old, typing short stories on my mom’s office computer. I wrote about rude rabbits and pigs with wigs and fancied myself the next Enid Blyton, whose books I used to collect. I later discovered poetry and penned many a bad rhyme. And then came the “junior journalist” phase, where I joined essay writing contests and became a staffer for the school paper. Growing up, I was so often told that I had potential for writing by both biased (my mom) and unbiased (teachers — they didn’t like me because I was a lazy underachiever) authority figures that I thought it must be true.

Here’s the truth, though. Even now that I have successfully earned a Journalism degree, I still can’t decide whether I like writing or not. While there are times when I feel the urge to just write, I usually struggle so much with it that I wonder if I’m even having fun. It’s rare for me to come up with a piece of writing that I’m satisfied with, and even when I do I still cringe every time I see someone reading what I wrote.

It’s drastically different from what I experience with my other hobbies. Even when it takes me days to complete a layout or finish a drawing, there’s no doubt in my mind that I’m enjoying what I’m doing. And I’m always proud of the end product and eager to show it to anyone who’s interested, whether I’m completely happy with it or not.

However, this is also true: for all of my creative pursuits, I always appreciate a good critique. I don’t mean good as in positive, but as in detailed and specific. I’ve attended writing workshops where they figuratively ripped my assignments apart, but I’ve found those sessions very helpful and even enjoyable. Not all reviews I’ve received were useful, though, particularly those that came from people who 1) didn’t really know what they were talking about and 2) didn’t take into account what I was trying to do with my piece and simply made suggestions based on his own vision. For me a useful critique is one that points out issues I might have missed and helps steer the piece closer to where I want it to go.

Kimmie’s recent review of Skylight was definitely useful. I requested her to critique this site after reading her well-written article on website reviews. Her suggestions helped me address many issues that had been bothering me before. The features section is now more organized and the index page less cluttered thanks to her. Next step: a more flexible CMS. I seriously need to move on from Blogger. Any suggestions?

In other news, I recently made two kid-inspired layouts, one for my candy-loving friend Kathy, the other for my LJ. What can I say? I have a lot of free time these days, being a bum and all I’m just resting a little before I go into full-on work mode after the holidays.