My friend Karen posted this video the other day and I think it’s pretty amazing.
The advances we’ve made in terms of healthy and productivity are amazing. To think that just 200 years ago the world had yet to experience the Industrial Revolution, nearly everything was handmade by artisans and we knew little about preventing and treating disease. We’ve come a long way, but striking disparities still remain.
In the spirit of not letting the blog go untouched for over a month, here’s some of what I’m up to:
I turned 27 last week. One step closer to 30.
Just posted a couple of recipes on TasteFresno. A guest blog post is pending.
Checking out the Path social network and app. Intriguing, but probably not something I’ll invest time into. I’m already sick of Twitter and Facebook, so…
I’ve ditched Evernote and started using SimpleNote and Notational Velocity for note-taking. They’re both simple, beautiful applications for making lists and notes. I use them to collect verses and quotes, plan Sunday mornings, and write lyrics. Love it.
A conversation…
Me: I should probably just shut down my blog.
Wifey: Maybe you should just post consistently.
…burned.
The other day, Gene asked for thoughts on why we’ve seen a decrease in blog activity over the past year. I’ve been thinking a lot about this as it applies to A Case Of The Mundys, so I thought I’d share my thoughts here:
Blogging well requires relationship. It requires regular attention not only to your blog, but to the blogs of your readers, and your potential readers. For me, I know that this attention would be better spent on the family and friends who are physically near me. I have a hard enough time being a good friend. I’ve tried to spend 2009 building less into web relationship and more into the people I actually spend time with. The caveat, of course, is that some of the people I spend time with are friends that I made through blogging or Twitter. I don’t discount the friends I’ve made in the blogging community, I simply feel a greater responsibility to those who are with me each day.
Blogging well requires time. When I first started blogging I worked for a company with a pretty lax internet policy and lots of down time. Finding interesting YouTube videos and writing witty bits of sarcasm could take up a couple of hours and it was no big deal. Things aren’t like that anymore. I’m working two busy jobs and when I come home I should probably spend time talking to my wife rather than typing on a laptop.
Blogging well requires content. Average Joe (aka, me) doesn’t really have much to say. Truth is, there is only a small circle of people who would care to read a long discourse on the role of worship in the Exodus (yeah, that’s a two-month old draft) and everything else I write about (food, my dog, snarky comments) fits perfectly into 140 characters on Twitter and Facebook. Without meaningful content, blogging is somewhat… meaningless.
What that means for blogging in 2010. I’m not putting down blogging as a medium. I still think it’s great. I still read lots of ‘em. I’m still going to write on this one. I just think it’s changing. The blogs that are holding on and thriving are those that have a purpose. Generally, that purpose is to promote something– a person, an idea, an album, something. The time and energy that goes into a good blog needs to have a payoff beyond, “oh! I had 31 views today!” It needs to translate into mp3s sold, ideas accepted, seats filled, or some other goal.
That’s my opinion. Thoughts?
So, my friend Stephanie recently had her dad write some guest posts about his new weight loss program. I’m a bit behind on my blog-reading, so I finally read these last night. I’m not sure if it’s just because I know him, or if it’s just my brand of humor, but I think it’s great. Here’s an excerpt:
…weakness is playing a big part in my ability to function. I was unable to get out of my chair at work. After repeated attempts, I realized that I was sitting to close to my desk and the reason I needed to loose weight was preventing me from getting up. With great effort, I amassed all the strength left in my weakened state and pushed my chair back, thus allowing me to call for help to assist me out of my chair. Decided not to get up after all. Need to save my strength to be able to go home after work…
I think I’d be a lot more excited about fireworks if California had less restrictions on all the really cool ones (bottle rocket, roman candles, etc.) In the meantime, I thought this was cool:
Happy 4th!
It’s been awhile since I’ve done this.
Monday:
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I just deleted every RSS feed in my “ministry” folder.
I read too much and I let that reading influence me way too much.
It’s not that any of the blogs I was reading were inherently bad, they just don’t really have a whole lot of bearing on what I’m actually involved in every week.
I’m the type who reads something and immediately thinks about how that applies to me and my situation. And blogs written by rockstar leaders in huge churches with web campuses generally don’t apply. At all.
Once again– not bad, just not applicable.
After reading leadership principles and setlists and stage design notes and staff meeting minutes from a bunch of churches ministering in a completely different context I start to think I should be ministering using the same methods:
What we really need is some synth and a bunch of LEDs.
How can we optimize our website for social media?
I’m totally using that song next week.
Wow. I really need to save up for some True Religion jeans.
Once again–not bad things (ok, maybe the jeans), just not a reality to me.
If I ever have questions about all that, those blogs will be there.
In the meantime, I’m taking a break from them. I have better things to do.
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1
Sep 09
< 1000
So, I randomly went to delete some spam today and noticed that I currently have 999 comments on this here blog. That blows my mind.
So, I just wanted to thank you all for reading and joining the conversation. Hopefully I’ll have a few comment-worthy posts in the next couple of weeks.
Oh, and 1000th comment gets something cool.