I had hoped to do a more in-depth post today (perhaps in the 50 Essential Passages group), but life has intervened. It always does.
Thus, I'd like to take this moment to congratulate myself on completing National Blog Posting Month! This post means that I did write or post something for every day of the month.
Back on the 1 November, I thought this would be challenging. Then a personal friend died and I was helping with the funeral and what had previously seemed like a pleasant challenge became daunting when I was tired and grief-stricken. Yet, I plunged on with the project, though I told myself I could quit and nothing would happen.
Committing to daily blogging has helped me in a couple ways. First of all, I tend to have great ideas about posting, particularly about news items, but I think them out until I'm sick of them and the news is old. Then I decide there's no point in commenting. The pressures of daily blogging made me go ahead and comment. This means you get a truer picture of my feelings than when I sanitize them through a long process (though that IS a good thing sometimes).
I also got a clearer picture of how long an individual post takes me. Something like Thanksgiving takes about 10-15 minutes, depending on the length of time it takes to find the video, article, whatever. It does take restraint to post something and not comment. Less is occasionally more. Posts in which I comment, but do little biblical work, take about 40 minutes to an hour. Good examples are my comments about the Pope and condoms or my thoughts about Lectionary Year A. Finally, posts that are based in the Bible and are primarily biblical analysis or commentary can take between 1-2 hours. Commenting about David and Jonathan and about Saul took about 90 minutes each time.
NaBloPoMo helped me just to go ahead and write, to consider my daily life at a different level and to go ahead and commit some of my reflections to the public view. Not everything I had to say was interesting, but the practice of writing helps develop the skills for when you need it to be interesting.
Even as I write this, I'm thinking about the NaBloPoMo website and their challenge for December blogging. The topic was zeitgeist- the spirit of a time or age. That's something on which I could comment...
Thus, I'd like to take this moment to congratulate myself on completing National Blog Posting Month! This post means that I did write or post something for every day of the month.
Back on the 1 November, I thought this would be challenging. Then a personal friend died and I was helping with the funeral and what had previously seemed like a pleasant challenge became daunting when I was tired and grief-stricken. Yet, I plunged on with the project, though I told myself I could quit and nothing would happen.
Committing to daily blogging has helped me in a couple ways. First of all, I tend to have great ideas about posting, particularly about news items, but I think them out until I'm sick of them and the news is old. Then I decide there's no point in commenting. The pressures of daily blogging made me go ahead and comment. This means you get a truer picture of my feelings than when I sanitize them through a long process (though that IS a good thing sometimes).
I also got a clearer picture of how long an individual post takes me. Something like Thanksgiving takes about 10-15 minutes, depending on the length of time it takes to find the video, article, whatever. It does take restraint to post something and not comment. Less is occasionally more. Posts in which I comment, but do little biblical work, take about 40 minutes to an hour. Good examples are my comments about the Pope and condoms or my thoughts about Lectionary Year A. Finally, posts that are based in the Bible and are primarily biblical analysis or commentary can take between 1-2 hours. Commenting about David and Jonathan and about Saul took about 90 minutes each time.
NaBloPoMo helped me just to go ahead and write, to consider my daily life at a different level and to go ahead and commit some of my reflections to the public view. Not everything I had to say was interesting, but the practice of writing helps develop the skills for when you need it to be interesting.
Even as I write this, I'm thinking about the NaBloPoMo website and their challenge for December blogging. The topic was zeitgeist- the spirit of a time or age. That's something on which I could comment...
Comments
I have liked writing about faith and life issues on my blog in the past. Then I started to get more political. All well and good, but I didn't want to be like those Fox commentators who give their opinion without checking out the facts and background, so sometimes my good thoughts didn't turn into a blog post due to lack of time to research some background stuff.
Plus, I read a lot of blogs and new on-line, and often I'm computered out before I have time to write more. And sometimes that is just a part of procrastinating. Well, usually, that is it.