As with all technologies, blogging adds something to our lives and takes something away.  For myself, blogging offers the opportunity to make a small ding in the world through what I hope will be thoughtful articles on a variety of topics.  Blogging enables me to discipline myself through writing.  In order to blog effectively, I understand the need to add new posts.  As with most disciplines, time will be required.  Yet I must avoid the tendency to allow my blog to rule my life.  Writing is a great discipline.  As Francis Bacon said,

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

Blogging also provides an avenue for me to lend my voice to the issues at hand.  For those reasons, I hope to work hard at adding to this blog a few days every week .

Whether I will follow through with my commitment remains to be seen.  To the reader, I will only offer this apology: my priorities in life lie outside of the blogworld.  While I have some ambitions towards writing, my writing ambitions hover just above the bottom of my bucket list.

Having blogged before, I have also learned what blogging takes away from us.  Blogging takes time, so blogging tends to take away time.  Blogging can be a great discipline, but it can also become a great time-waster.  I hope I will not waste time with this blog – either you the reader’s or my own.  In the past when I blogged, I found that the comment sections in particular became a great time-waster.  Woe to the blogger whose comments are more interesting than his blog.

Blogging can waste time in a variety of ways.  Since I understand the nature of the blogging business, I know that interacting with commenters and other bloggers can almost be a necessity in order to grow a base of readers.  So it might surprise you to know that I do not intend to do either of these things.  If I write well, you might come back to read regardless of whether I applaud you for doing it or not.  If I don’t write well, then massaging your ego won’t improve my poor writing.

In the past, I have written articles that strained relationships and tested friendships.  I hope to avoid that nasty habit on this go-around.  Blogging has evolved since the year bloggers were named “persons of the year” at the height of the blogging craze.  We have since settled on easier mediums for social networking, and long blog articles are no longer the craze.  In those early days, blogs provided an avenue for people to get their angst out against society.  No doubt this sort of thing still happens.  I do not wish to add to the mounds of published angst in the world.

I do understand that vitriol gains readership, and we are rarely interested in the hockey game until the fight breaks out.  Nonetheless, I intend to stick to my purpose for this blog: hammering out some important ideas.  May you the reader be blessed and helped by what you find here.