June 20, 2009

Look at that! So intent on what I was writing was I that I completely missed my anniversary!

Oh, no, not my wedding anniversary; my blogging anniversary. On June 20 I entered my 4th year of blogging. In that time I've registered 1,144 entries in my attempt to enter something every day. (I haven't quite succeeded. Three years including a leap year would be 1,096 entries, so, while I have missed a day or two, I'm pretty much where I intended to be.)

In the last year I've had slight variations in readership, up to 500 or so on a good week and down to just under 200 or so on a bad week. I'm not turning any heads -- not making a splash in the blogosphere -- but I can't complain. I don't know 200 people who would read my blog. So I'm satisfied with that.

I made more than a few posts on some of my favorite topics. I had 11 posts on the "same-sex marriage" debate, 6 more on homosexuals in general, and 6 on Global Warming. Apparently I do enjoy humor because I've tagged 13 posts as humor in the last year. There were 10 posts on marriage, starting with a post about my son getting married last June. And, of course, I'm a big fan of Reformed Theology as evidenced by some 16 posts on the topic. Now, I'm not a big fan of politics, but I still posted 16 entries with that tag in the last year. Of course, you have to realize that June of 2008 to November of 2008 was the presidential race, so that's a large reason why there would be so many. Interestingly (at least to me), my last post labeled "politics" was October 31, 2008. You see, when the race ended and the winner was announced, I was pretty much done with the topic. Pretty much. I did a 4-part series on "Doing Church" and a 2-part series on "Biblical Elders" and I started a series of posts titled "Are you sure you want to go there?" because I figured they wouldn't win me any friends. (Lucky for me I'm not here to win friends.)

Comments were livelier this past year. I've had some friendly discussions with an atheist who goes by the name DagoodS. Well, mostly friendly. I'm not complaining. And when I wrote my post on The Church and the Military, it brought Dan Trabue out for the first time. Anyone who has followed this blog for any time at all (along with its comments) would likely recognize that name. Dan and I have had many lively conversations -- most of them friendly. I always enjoyed a good dialog with Von, too. He sometimes disagreed, sometimes agreed, and sometimes expanded on what I had said, so all of those conversations were generally friendly. Other commenters kept coming back, and I appreciated them. I now actually have a personal friendship with Dan of The Bumbling Genius. I have always read and enjoyed Neil's blog and appreciate his comments. New commenters include people I don't at all know. I've enjoyed hearing from Ruth from time to time and Sherry (who doesn't apparently blog, but always has fun things to say). Starflyer started up (whom I do know) and I finally figured out who "srp" is. And there are a whole bunch of you out there that I'm not naming by name but greatly appreciate when you leave me a comment. (Please don't feel slighted that my addled old brain can't call your name to immediate remembrance.) All comments are read and appreciated. Some of you have really encouraged me. Some of you have made me think (and rethink). I really appreciate those. I'm encouraged that, despite posts on such hot topics as "same-sex marriage", "Homosexuals", and the obviously dangerous theme of "Are you sure you want to go there?", I've had nothing I'd classify as "hate mail", either in comment or email form. I don't know if that's because I'm not widely read or that I'm just such a lovable guy that ... okay, never mind the latter. But I'm not complaining. Whatever the reason, I'm glad not to deal with that.

I don't really have any way of gauging, in the end, whether or not I've actually approached my goal. It was not simply my goal to have a forum in which to vent my ideas. It was my hope that people would benefit from it. Maybe they'd be challenged. Maybe they'd be encouraged. Some benefit. I can't know if that is happening, but I pray that it is. So I'll press on to Year 4 and see where this takes us.