Tag Archives: blogging

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On the road again…

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Well, it looks like we’ll be on the road for the next nine days or so. Some exciting stuff, visiting friends and family, attending the CCDA conference and taking one last getaway before we start ‘real’ life up here in Minneapolis. I’m not going to try and post every day while I’m gone, though if I have a chance I’ll put something up. I’m really enjoying the housing conversations and I’m thinking about it quite a bit.

Look forward to chatting more when I get back about October 14th.

p.s.  It’s my birthday on October 7th. The thing I like most for people to do on my birthday is to do something on behalf of me. If I’ve had any sort of impact or influence on you at all, then step out of your box and do something radical in that regard, and if you want, tell me about it. Give away something, bike to work, write a letter, stop shopping, pay off your mortgage, or just smile.

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Back and Better Than… Well, Just Back

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Alright folks, today officially marks the end to my blogging break here at Trying to Follow. I wish I had some grand insights to share with you about my experience, but I don’t really. Mainly, we’ve gone through some major transitions lately (baby, moving, job and home searching) and so I figured a break from this would help me to sort of focus on those other things. I did make some cool post banners though.

I had a plan to continue to write daily, in hopes that I could begin to build an honest collection of thoughts on faith. I figured this would be a good thing to do for a couple reasons. One, writing down your beliefs is good practice in general. Two, with a new child and the responsibility of parenting, I figured collecting my thoughts would better prepare me for intentionally instilling my values in my children. Three, not that I have all the answers, but having been on a faith journey for a significant part of my current life, my thoughts might prove useful to others on their journey. I say all that, and yet I failed miserably at doing that consistent writing and only really got started about a week ago. I’m still plugging along, but I needed to start writing here again as an outlet for all the other thoughts banging around in my mind.

I mentioned trying to change the format of this blog, but I’m not sure that I will yet. At the moment, this is simply my personal blog that serves as an outlet for me to write and dialog with others about a wide range of topics. I do think this will become a bit more ‘faith’ oriented in nature as I’m really making an effort to flesh out what I believe in a way that makes sense to others. That isn’t to say that you need to be on the same ‘faith’ journey as me, I would really appreciate the dialog from others who don’t share my faith beliefs. I think what I might do, especially when I cover topics that might not seem related to my belief system, I’ll try and add a little blurb that makes explicit what Bible verses or values compel me to care about this issue or that. If I start slacking on doing that, just ask me and I’ll respond.

Asides: Just a quick note of some additions. Be sure to check out my ‘Who I Read‘ page. It’s a long list but I subscribe to every one of those websites and I highly recommend most of them. If your not on there let me know and I’ll add you. Also, I’m going to take down Comment Love for a little while. I’ll keep you updated on our donations, but I don’t think it was really helping facilitate further conversation. Also, I’m adding my YouTube channel to the sidebar and I’ll be posting more ‘asides’ exclusively at the website, not on the feed. Alright, peace.

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Make way for the Nuns

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Nuns in Cars

I was walking to a training for work a while ago. As I was walking a car pulled down a driveway I was crossing and in it sat two Sisters dressed in traditional garb. Immediately, almost instinctively, I had this moment of reverence. I think I almost put my hand to my heart or up to salute, I’m not really sure, all I know is I felt this need to show some sort of respect or honor, as if a King was passing.
A couple days later Mindy and I were driving on the highway and passed another vehicle with four Sisters in it. Again, I felt this sense of reverence and need to show honor. Mindy and I talked about it for a little bit and she helped me decipher a little why we feel so much respect and admiration for nuns.

The commitment to their faith, is almost unrivaled in our culture. Even on my most devote day of religious commitment I seem half-hearted compared to the lifelong commitment these honorable women have put forth. Were does that commitment come from? Why are there so few examples of it in our culture? I really do feel a level of reverence for nuns and monks. I think it should be mandatory to salute them when they come by, or something of that nature.

Maybe I can glean some wisdom from some nuns who blog,
A Nun’s Life and Crossing,

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Happenings At Trying To Follow

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If you haven’t noticed or known already, there’s quite a few changes going on at my house. For those who know me well, and those who don’t here’s a brief update/insight into Ariah’s Life and Blog these days.

In less then one month our little household community will begin to disband. It’s been an exciting year, and a life changing one. I’ve spent the last ten months in a house hold with 8 other people, two of them young children. It’s been an incredible time and I think it has shaped and changed each of our futures in dramatic ways. I’m sorry I haven’t blogged more about the experience, I think it’s a hard task to write on when your in the midst of it. I think I might interview all our housemates on how this experience has effected and changed them and post those as podcasts…

And the big change for me is coming any day with the birth of our first baby. I’ve had the last week off or work to clean and prepare the house, tend to my wife’s needs and try and wrap my mind around the idea that I’ll be a father. I’ve done okay at the first two, but conceiving of holding my child in a few days is hard to grasp. I have been adjusting to the fact that my life will never be the same, I’m really soaking in the transition that this moment in time is.

And, I guess sort of a reflection of the outward changes going on in my life, I’m sort of in a transitional stage with Trying to Follow and my writings, hobbies and interest. Not sure what that means for this blog at the moment yet. I’ve thought about pursuing different avenues of blogging, writing, podcasting and more. I love to write so I don’t plan on that going away, just morphing into something different. I might not write as much (as you’ve already seen), or I might write more. I just added the Asides, minipost that don’t hold as much expectation to be profound, which you won’t find in the RSS or emails, you’ll have to come to the site to get them. I’m also going to be doing a podcasting segment with Josh Brown for the Nick and Josh Podcast, I’ll link to it when it’s up and running. Oh, and if you haven’t subscribed to my blog let, please do so.

So, we’ll see if any new changes come this way, but for now, enjoy your weekend. Hopefully I’ll have a baby by the end of mine.

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Blogging, Writing, Reflecting, Sleeping

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Those who have faithfully read my blog as it’s progressed over the last year or two should be happy that this is the first of these sorts of posts in quite a while. As I was getting started it seemed like every week, or every other post, I was talking about the blog, asking people’s thoughts on the design, etc. Well, I’ve avoided it for a while, some will be proud (kudos welcome).

I’ve been posting one blog post a day for the last few months now and I have every intention of continuing. Hopefully this has made it easier to take in, like choice morsels of caramel each day (or maybe prunes). I’ve also been doing mini-series of posts, which I’ve enjoyed writing as the desire to write about certain things has arisen. I’m also eager to sort of go back and bring up two older series, Considering Church and Thoughts on War.

The main reason I’m writing this fairly worthless self-reflective post, with the rambling above which I deleted, is to acknowledge that sometimes writing is hard to do. I have a bunch of ideas bouncing around in my head right now which I would love to write down, but I can’t seem to find the motivation at the moment.

However, I’m excited to acknowledge that I’ve been making an effort to go to bed earlier and to wake up earlier, which has been a very positive experience for me. I leave you with a brief list of upcoming changes/additions/ideas for what I’d like to do with the site in the future:

  • Update/fix my About Me page
  • do cool theme banners like Josh
  • re-design and promote the required reading and podcast pages
  • highlight and update the podcast more
  • update to wordpress 2.2
  • create downloadable booklets about various topics in pdf format
  • integrate better sidebar content

    • Sorry this post was lame. I’m just in a struggling writing mood.

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The Results are in!

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As you can see, most of you don’t mind more posts. For the few that do only want one a day I’m going to try and figure out and show you a way to subscribe to just one.

Now, this doesn’t mean I will necessarily post more then once a day, but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t imposing too much on you if I do. For those that receive the email update this shouldn’t be a problem at all since it automatically puts each days posts (one or more) into one email. So it shouldn’t be anymore clutter then normal.

One of the things I’m hoping to do is post more of my podcasts within the blog so that folks who don’t come to the site have a chance to listen to and discuss them. I’ll also post links to interesting articles and other items I’ve read.

That’s about it. Hope you enjoy this second post of the day.

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Because it really is all about you

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Quick question for you. Hoping you can answer below:

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Since many of my readers are subscribed in some way (and if not look on the right sidebar now!) I want to make sure your satisfied with what your getting. I don’t want to break your expectations and start posting too much a day.

I’m also making some other changes to the archive, and adding a Conversation page to encourage more interaction between readers. If you have other ideas to make it better let me know (add a forum, layout comments differently, integrating the podcast).

Okay, sorry for the quick update note. Thanks for taking the time to answer that survey.

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Top 20 Posts of 2006

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Someone gave me the idea to do a brief year-in-review section of the blog as 2006 comes to a close. Thanks to performancing for being able to pull these statistics. Unfortunately a number of the links go to my main page rather then the specific post, so if you really want to see the link you’ll have to search for it. Also, some of the Whitney Cerak posts I’ve taken down because I couldn’t afford the web hosting cost of so many people coming to view the links. Fortunately I think I’ve cleared up that problem.
Enough random rambling for now, enjoy the links.

1. Whitney Cerak: Alive and in a … 2810 4%
2.   Final posting from the Van Ryn… 2647 4%
3. Weekly Podcast Update 06.04.06 2177 3%
4.   Whitney Cerak: An update on he… 2156 3%
5.   Graffiti Paint Tagging Art 2155 3%
6.   Why I ditched Dave Ramsey 1951 3%
7.   Antsy update, Tagging, and fin… 1841 3%
8.   Rejoice with those who Rejoice… 1303 2%
9.   About ariah fine. 1195 2%
10.   Uses for a Single Post-It Note 991 1%
11.   Failing Reading Scores = Priso… 807 1%
12.   That’s My King: a Procla… 807 1%
13.   Gentrification: a Case Study o… 687 1%
14.   Wafa Sultan. Al-Jeezera interv… 654 1%
15.   USANA is worth considering 638 1%
16.   5 Steps to Record a Skype Call… 622 1%
17.   I like free stuff. Music downl… 610 1%
18.   What I did this weekend 585 1%
19.   Radiant Magazine and sexist as… 537 1%
20.   Tech Friday: Using Google Maps… 524 1%
Blog

upgrading

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just FYI, people seemed to be having trouble with the new theme so I reverted back to this old one, which I like at the moment.

I also updated to Firefox 2.0 which you should do as well.

It’s fabulous.