The accidental blogger

The will to blog did not come from within. It did not sneak up on me. I was lured into it by a beautiful woman. My wife took an online class on blogging. She is a writer. A big part of her employment has been writing online. If I told you her name you could Google her specific field and many of her articles would come up. I have always thought that was pretty cool. I am very proud of her, can you tell? The class was a smashing success. She created her own personal blog and one for her field of expertise. She also writes one for our local newspaper’s website. One day she suggested that I should write a blog. I laughed at her. She continued to say so for quite a while and I continued to find the whole notion very funny. You see, I am not a very mainstream kind of person. Honestly, with God as my witness, whenever I prepare lessons or sermons I still sit down with paper and pencil and write them out by hand. I wish I could say it was the result of some principled Luddite stand like Wendell Berry still using his old typewriter. It’s not. Somehow, I did not receive the genetic code to allow me to enter the 21st century gracefully, My family, on the other hand, eats, drinks and sleeps technology. When I first heard the word blog, I thought it was something a physician might have to remove. Then I learned it had something to do with the Internet. So it made sense that my wife would have one. But me?

This blog grew out of the fact that every evening after work I would come home to supper and tell stories to the family about my day at work. Very often we end up laughing so hard at some crazy thing that happened that we cannot eat our food. My kids will say, “Dad, did anything happen at work today?” and then look at me to see if we are going to be able to get our food down without choking. Sometimes the stories are sad and nearly make us cry. There is never a famine of stories when I come home from work. My wife kept telling me that I should write a blog and share some of these stories. Finally, I relented. She set up this account and turned me loose. She has tried before without much success to move me into the modern world. This time she prevailed. I started under the condition that my blog be kept anonymous for the sake of the confidentiality of the people I serve. I really am not all that interesting in person anyway. What you are reading now is thanks to my wife and the class she took. I thought I would type a few posts to make her happy. I now have 95 posts. I find that bizarre. It means that I also caught the blogging bug.

I have committed my share of blogging errors. Looking back on my posts, I see that I have often been theologically crabby. I have probably over-shared personal information. I have also probably under-shared just what an ass I can be at times. This medium allows me to sin in thought, word and deed just like in my daily life. I probably have made myself out to be more spiritual than I really am. Some of my stories sound like I am a hero. I am not. Whenever I have mentioned helping someone, I did not include the thoughts that raced through my head like “Damn, this is going to interrupt my lunch.” If this blog has made me appear to be a saint because I work with the homeless, I assure you that is a fictional self I would love to create. That mythical person may exist somewhere, but not in front of this computer screen. I have also discovered that once words are fired off into cyberspace, they are like arrows, not easily retrieved. Some of you have asked me about my erratic posting schedule. Why do I go for days without anything and then post two within hours of each other? I have learned to let some things simmer in the drafts folder for a while. I delete almost as many as I publish. I have learned that something may make my family laugh, but that does not mean it should ever leave my house. I have published some posts and then reconsidered after I came to my senses. One involved thongs. One was written after a very awful day at work with my boss. One involved stigmatizing the homeless with stereotypes that I detest. I deleted all of them from my blog with relative haste only to later discover that somehow they made it into that RSS feed thing and went out to my subscribers! I still have not figured out that RSS feed thing, but I am now far more cautious about instantly publishing my posts. I enjoy sharing these stories mixed with rants and theological reflections. I would be dishonest to say that I have figured out these theological issues once and for all. I am still on a journey of exploration when it comes to God. I also enjoy reading the blogs and comments of the many people who have stopped by here. I am not sure how long this will go on. I have no goal to create a blog that will last one thousand years. Dust we are and to dust we shall return---our blogs included. Maybe I will run out of stories one day. Right now I am highly motivated to continue for a little while longer so that I can at least put some mileage on my computer and justify its existence in my life. You see not long after I started writing this blog I celebrated my birthday. This year my wife kept asking me what I wanted for my birthday. I kept dropping subtle and not so subtle hints that I wanted to go back to the badlands out West and dig fossils again. I had every intention of doing so last year and then I broke my leg. Ahhh, the wide open spaces---a geological wonderland! Imagine my surprise when my spouse said to me, “I am going to have to give you your present early.” My heart skipped a beat. I had not even asked off from work. “It’s out in the car.” I looked to see if the back of the car was packed with rock hammers and excavation equipment. Instead, I discovered …this really incredible computer? It does everything. It is, I am told, quite an advanced piece of machinery. I am the envy of my gadget-loving family. The problem is that I use it to check my email and to type out my blog with two fingers. Yes, I have more than two fingers, but only two of them type. They are my Wendell Berry fingers. Most of the time my family uses it to watch television, teleport, manipulate satellites in space and all of those other neat things you can do these days. However, when I come home it is reserved for creating these posts and checking email. I am told that is like using a NASCAR racer to only drive to the store every day to get milk. Vroom. Vroom! My CEO also bought me an incredible new computer at work. I have one that was made when Bill Gates was still in puberty. My new computer at work has sat in the box for over a month. I keep telling everyone that I will get around to hooking it up. Secretly, I cannot think of a good reason why. I can check my email and type out this blog at home. Man, does this thing check email fast! So, I have to keep blogging for a little while longer to put some mileage on my birthday present. My wife’s birthday is coming up in November. I have already got my eye on something for her that is just perfect for her technology addiction. I am planning a trip to the lonely badlands of Montana where she can excavate dinosaur bones that are millions of years old. I am even planning on giving her a piece of paper and a pencil so she can write about it.