I first started blogging in 2005. I was mostly looking for conversation partners who wanted to talk about some of the deep paradigm shifts in theology and ministry I was going through at the time.
Back then, I’d post something any time I had any kind of new thought about something. Writing was a way for me to work out the idea and bounce it off a few people. This was back when people commented on blogs (remember those days?).
Eventually I learned about content marketing, and how offering good free content could create an audience, etc… which is all fine and good. I appreciate those lessons and still use them every day in my various projects.
But I found that I stopped writing just to write, or to work out an idea, or post a cool quote that I wanted to share. Every post had to have some deep strategic goal behind it, and I lost some of the playfulness and creativity that I think I used to have in my writing (especially here, on my personal blog).
So, partly inspired by being on vacation for the past week, I’m going to try and write more consistently on this blog. I want to say every day but that might be biting off more than I can chew right now. I definitely feel tugged back into how blogging used to be for me (even though most of the world has “moved on” from this kind of blogging).
I guess that’s kind of the point, though. I don’t want to just write to cater to where the “world” is at. I need a space to just write, explore ideas, practice thinking, and not worry too much about who will read it or what concrete impact it will have.
(I should also say that I was partly inspired to do this by two people I appreciate from afar, but have never met personally: Alan Jacobs and Austin Kleon. Keep up the good work!)
Here’s to more writing for writing’s sake!
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