Happy 5th Blog Birthday

As I mentioned at the start of the month there are a number of significant events and milestones that take place over this month. A dear family friend will be celebrating her birthday with us, hopefully. This week also sees the first year anniversary of our departure from living in Stoke-on-Trent. The most important event for my personal reasons is the 6^th birthday of my firstborn child.

In as much as Deborah’s birthday is no doubt the most important event this month, one that is not so far away from it in terms of importance is that this here blog celebrates 5 years of existence.

It was 14^th December when I first had a go at this blogging business. I had no idea how things would pan out. I never had a game plan or strategy for the development of it in those early days. I just found it rather novel to be able to write and post things up online.

Five years on, though and things have changed a lot. In those days I was still getting used to how to format an entry and having difficulty making it ‘look’ presentable. Also back in the day I wasn’t so fussed about frequency. In fact it’s only been in the last year or two that I’ve picked up the regularity of the blogging and it’s proven to be a great discipline as well as method of expression.

Where back in the day I would post a few entries a month over the one blog, now it’s not uncommon to see me post a few entries a day over the two blogs. That has nothing to do with brilliance, and more about what I do with my time and how I make the most of particularly rich veins of form, when I can knock out a few blog ideas and save myself the hassle of being ‘fresh’ on the day or at the time of the scheduled post.

Having the two blogs is actually a great help to me knowing that certain material will fit comfortably over at the Other Place and leaving everything to this here place.

I believe the quality of the writing has improved since I was writing in 2005 – that has a lot to do with getting into the rhythm of writing and also getting to read a wide range of other bloggers and the disciplines they followed or the creativity they showed. This year in particular I was pleased to put out so much and develop a number of themes that had been swimming in the ether of my mind for quite some time. September and October were hard months, but overall I am really happy with the thought that I can keep blogging and keep sharing and more importantly still keeping a record to see what steps along the journey I’ve made.

If God would allow, I’d love to carry on blogging for as long as I can. I know some people quit blogging for various reasons and it must be made clear – blogging is not my life. I don’t live to blog, there are other far more important passions that I pursue, so if the occasion came where I had to give up something, I’m fairly sure I would relinquish this responsibility. Yet I know I would do so with reluctance and a heavy heart, because I do enjoy it so much. Primarily I love it as an outlet for the gift I believe I have in terms of communicating. I’ve loved words for as long as I can remember and reading and writing come to me almost as naturally as water comes to a fish, so this outlet is brilliant for that. There is also the feedback and conversations that come from the entries and how people take it or not. That is worth its weight in gold.

There is a reason, though, for the way that each entry for most of the five years has ended. My desire is to write all for His Name’s Sake. That doesn’t mean everything needs to have a scripture reference and sound austere and sombre with a touch of reverence. It is to say that I write for Him really. I write to share what’s going on in me life and how He influences it from the marvellous to the mundane.

By all means go through the archives and see how things have changed here in the five years and over the coming weeks I’ll be pointing you to posts I’ve written over that time that should make for good reading.

Thank you so much for reading – even if this is the only entry you will read. I appreciate you taking the time to read it and ask you to give it another go as the days and entries go by. The aim and desire is to continue to progress in this writing business – I want to improve and there is so much room to do that. I want to put on book reviews of the material that won’t always fit the other place. I want to become more effective in what I produce. There is so much of my life and the things around that make for fascinating reading and I want to be a diligent and creative chronicler who can make sure you the reader will receive it as a patron in a restaurant receives a well made meal.

In the meantime continue to feel free to leave comments here on the blog or email me your thoughts on the address given in the details section.

Thanks again – and here’s hoping for more years of even better blogging.

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

dmcd