That’s right. I’m starting a blog. In the year 2026. Which is something like 15-20 years after the peak of blogs as a popular medium of communication. We’ve moved towards shorter and more visual forms of communication and yet I chose this instead. Here are a few reasons I’ve decided to start writing a blog this year:
- I’m not good at the short form thing. I’ve had a Twitter account since the days of the Fail Whale and when re-tweeting was done by typing RT and quoting the previous message. Now, I just use it to read a handful of accounts. Even when I was more active, I mostly re-tweeted or tweeted about sports. I don’t have much content of substance in there. Facebook was a little better, but I mostly left that after they changed to focus to consuming the algorithmic feed and made it harder to connect with faraway friends.
- I want to stay in the practice of writing. I noticed that if I took a semester off (like most summers), it took about a month to feel like I could write quickly again. Given that writing a doctoral dissertation is a real possibility in the future, I want to be writing regularly. I have a word count goal for the year. Anything I write here as well as things like sermon manuscripts and letters will count. Shorter communications like texts, slack messages, and e-mails do not. I guess if I write something like a letter in an e-mail, that will count, but I don’t tend to do that. Generally, I only want to count things that have some level of organization.
- Writing publicly puts some level of accountability on me to keep up with writing. I’m more likely to find the time to write if I know someone is expecting regular content (note to self: talk friends into reading this blog).
- I have a lot of random thoughts in my head after finishing seminary. Some of those might be worth sharing. This blog seems like a reasonable place to do so. Early on, I’ll probably focus on takeaways from various classes. Eventually, I’ll move into some observations on what the Bible has to say about rest and work. In between, I’ll talk a bit about running and computers. And I’ll throw out some thoughts on other topics too. Just to keep y’all guessing.
- I considered YouTube as an alternative/addition. I did a short-lived audio podcast during the COVID lockdowns. I’m not ruling out an audio/visual thing eventually, but for now, I want to focus on writing. I have other outlets for regularly speaking right now.
And so I’m starting a blog in 2026. The intent is to publish at least one “longer” piece of writing a week (likely on Saturdays) and add a few shorter posts during the week if I’m not too busy. We’ll see what actually happens.