Vision for this blog in the New Year

Number one, I would like to start posting regularly again. None of this missing a whole month and a half, practically forgetting my blog even exists.

Two, I think I will head in the direction of writing about what I'm thinking about rather than focusing on what I'm doing. What I'm thinking about is usually far more interesting than what I'm doing, unless I'm hiking or having some sort of wild and crazy adventure--but if I only write about the interesting things I do, then the blog gets sorely neglected between times, and it ends up reading like a rather bad hiking log. The problem is, what I'm thinking about doesn't always lend itself to pictures, and I have lately dropped all pretense of photography, so I usually don't even have pictures, even of the picturesque things I did. Therefore, this is your heads-up that these posts may become more text-based and less photo-based. However, hopefully, hopefully, the interesting things I am thinking about will make up for the lack of visual stimulation in the blog. Hopefully. Perhaps these things are interesting to me and no one else in the world. So far, these thoughts have generally been confined to the pages of my journal and/or locked silently away in the dendrites and axons and synapses of my cerebrum. Now, I'm going to try releasing them to frolic in this small private-but-public place.

(Do you generally find that no one else thinks like you? I do. Have you discovered, as I have, that it is supremely enjoyable to read the work of someone whose thoughts are totally unpredictable, simply because they don't think like you do? And when what they're saying makes sense, though you would never have thought of it that way, does it not give you a springboard for your own imagination to launch its own series of new thoughts? G.K. Chesterton's book Orthodoxy (free on Kindle) does this for me. There is a certain sense of satisfaction and delight to discover what another person's thoughts are, and to understand them, and to interact with their thoughts until your own thoughts go through a transformative synthesis and you have new ideas that you've never had before.)

Three, I want to be more intentionally gospel-focused and discipleship-oriented. I want the things I write to help you, encourage you, teach you, and draw you closer to Jesus.

Four, and this is related to number three, I want to not be concerned about what people think about my writing, and instead be wholly concerned with what Jesus thinks of my writing. I will write what pleases Him, come what may, let the world rage and storm as it likes. I have always hesitated to be full-throttle about my Christian faith in the sight of other people--but is not that quality one that we appreciate when we find it in men like Spurgeon?

Perhaps I will lose some readers and gain others, or perhaps I will lose all my readers, or perhaps the growth of this blog will be unprecedented and utterly unexpected. Let's see what happens if I do this. Will you join me on the journey forward?