My Recent Absence

I don't know why I feel obligated to tell you this, but, as you may have noticed, I have not been blogging for about the past 1.5 weeks. Not that you care, I mean, I obviously did not feel obligated enough to update with anything.

Here is an update, however: I will be gone for another week, I am leaving at 6:30 this morning for RUF's Summer Conference in Panama City, Florida. It will be great fun, I suppose. When I get back I plan to start back up blogging with some notes from the various seminars and sermons I hear while I am there.

Well, see you on the other side.

Stuff Christians Like (Sort of) Guest Post

I have been a big fan of Jon Acuff's blog Stuff Christians Like for quite some time. Therefore, I lept at the opportunity to for him to do a guest post on this blog. While it isn't a formal guest post, this is part of a full-length scorecard, the rest of which can be found here:

The “Is that contestant on American Idol a Christian? Scorecard”

48. They do one of those Ford commercials involving a car wash and they wear a tankini during the scene = + 3 points

Music Week...of Videos

First. I don't post on Sundays...except sometimes. So that's why this is at 12:01. And so it's before all the videos.

This week will consist completely of musical related posts. Really, just music videos that I have enjoyed. Unless I change my mind. Whatevs. Enjoy.

Movin' Reviewin'

Just to you, my loyal readership that up until recent had not broken 30 individuals know, I am not going to be doing Witwiwo Reviews on this blog any more.

I have already deleted them from this blog and moved them over to my new review blog, What I Thought When It Was Over. Clever title, eh? Didn't see that one coming, did ya?

I will still do some review-ish posts on this blog, but my straight up Witwiwo Reviews and similar things will be located over there.

Enjoy.

Blog Subscriptions

I don't know how you keep up with this blog (if you keep up with this blog), but for my subscriptions, I use Google Reader. It's a pretty bangin' tool, and makes it fairly easy to get all of your subscriptions in one location.

That being said, I have roughly 120 subscriptions, everything from friend's blogs to ministries' blogs, some authors, and several different webcomics. Over the summer, because I couldn't get online every day, I got way behind on my subscriptions. Like 400 unread posts behind.

Yesterday, I took it upon myself during my three hours at work to clear them all out, and I did. At 3:30 yesterday I had zero unread posts.

Now, I get on today and had 26 unread posts. Is that bad? Some people update two or three times a day, so it's a little understandable. But I could easily see blogging becoming as big a hindrance as Facebook was. Bleh.

How do you get your blog posts? Do you think it can be a hassle to keep up with them?

Of Blogging Technique

I've found that I hate trying to read a blog post that is long, not even excessively so, unless I am super excited about the topic it is discussing. For that reason, I try to keep my posts short, and even if they aren't, I try to break up the paragraphs so it is easier to read.

Still, I think that keeps some people from commenting because it seems like it's only "T.J.'s short thoughts" and does not require response. Or maybe I just don't talk about things that are interesting enough.

One technique I've notice Jon Acuff uses at Stuff Christians Like is to ask a question at the end of most of his posts.

So, what do you think? Are shorter blogs better? Are shorter paragraphs easier to read?

Predestination vs. Free Will

I'm thinking about starting a blog called "Presdestination vs. Free Will." I've actually already registered the URL just in case.

The basic premise would be this: I'd get a few of my reformed friends and a few of my non-Calvinist friends, and we would look for examples in everyday life that represent our (or the opposing side's) view. Just little things which you could point to and say "Aha! Predestination!" or "Aha! Free will!"

The point would be to point to the fact that while it does matter what you believe, the really focus should be on going out and loving God and loving others.

So, anyone interested?

This Blog's Future

I've been trying to figure out what to do with my online writings and musings.

I've found that a lot of my writings falls into one of several categories:

• Theology/Spiritual Thoughts—I mean, I love theology and spiritual discourse, so naturally I'd been prone to write about it a lot.
• Poetry/Literature—again, I love this stuff, plus I consider myself a poet; indeed, the subtitle to my blog is "the imparticular thoughts of a particular poet."
• Life Experiences—it is a blog, a 'weblog' of my life...so...
• Random Stuff—videos, quotes (which often fall into the first three categories as well), or just different things I find online.

In addition to these categories, I'd like to start doing regular reviews of books, movies, TV-shows, and other media that I experience. I've actually wanted to do that for a long time.

So I'm wondering, should I split it up into several different blogs, with one for theology, one for poetry, one for life/random stuff, and another with reviews?

My biggest hindrance to going ahead and doing that is, often times they overlap: good theology is practical, so it often applies to my current life; poetry and spiritual thoughts are often intertwined, at least for me.

My second dissuasion is that I don't know what I would name them, or how I would go about managing them. I'd like to develop a readership in each area, but I don't know if people would follow me to those others blogs.

Any suggestions on the dilemma would be welcome, including possible names/URLs for the new blogs.

So...questions, comments, suggestions?