Two-year review

You may have noticed that things have been somewhat quiescent here on my blog for the last few months. Part of the reason for that, I'm sure, is simple laziness. A great deal of it, however, is the fact that I'm sort of at a loss as to what I should be doing with this project.

I started it two years ago in hopes that it would do for me something no journal has ever done: exercise and develop my writing skills by giving me a space in which to publish things I write. While the blog has therefore been for myself as much as anyone else, I had hoped that the semi-public nature of the thing would motivate me to keep it up and write regularly.

Well, it's been two years now, and I think the results have been mixed. There have been periods when I posted rather frequently. Working an overnight security shift for a semester and needing something to keep me awake helped that. So did my internship at the church in which I wrote 3000-5000 words a week. There have also been periods, though, where posting was much less frequent and substantially less substantial.

I want to keep the blog going, because it has been a good exercise for me, even if I haven't always kept it updated frequently. I certainly have written more than I would have without it. The trouble is that I'm not sure what to do with it. I've never been comfortable with using it as an online diary, the way some folks do with their blogs. Anyone who has been around the blogosphere for very long is familiar with the divide between linkers and thinkers--that is, between those who mainly link to interesting work produced by others and those who mainly write down their own thoughts. I've tried to be mainly a thinker, but consistently producing interesting original material is hard work. My respect for those who write regular columns has risen immensely since I started blogging.

Over the last two years, I've covered a wide range of subjects with my posts, including politics, philosophy, theology, ecclesiology, book and film reviews, poetry and literature, and more. Though it reflects the broad range of my interests, I'm not quite satisfied with this, and I think I would benefit from focusing my writing more narrowly on a specific discipline, topic, or field of interest. It might give me an incentive to do more specific, focused study and research than I've done before. I think it would also make my blog more interesting, at least to some people, than the average ramblings of an armchair philosopher--which you can find on literally thousands of personal blogs. I guess I need a thesis for my blog. Trouble is, I'm not sure what that should be.

So, until I solve this problem and figure out what exactly to do with this thing that occupies my free time and doesn't make me any money, I suspect it'll continue mostly as it has up to this point--a somewhat meandering window on the things I'm thinking, reading, and writing.