100.

Brief time lines have never provided much of the intimacy and depth that we tend to desire as those who are image bearers of the Creator.

This is my one hundredth post.

I started blogging on May 18, 2006. That's roughly 956 days which equals a post every ten days or so. My first blog title was, "A Fresh Sort of Start." The post was about how there were no fresh starts... it was about the baggage we carry. It was written two weeks after my friend Eric Harless died. It was written one year and 2 weeks after my Dad died. It was written shortly after my sister told me that she wished I had died.

It was written one year, five months and ten days after my new life started with Laura.

When I read it I thought, "Wow...not a lot has changed sense then." Seriously, if you've kept up with me over the years, you might have thought that this sort of baggage might have been lost on one of my many trip mishaps.

But no.
It's still here.

So...it is a new year. A year ago, Mayor Nutter promised it that it was a new day for Philadelphia. A little over a month ago, President Elect Obama promised change for our nation.

And we? We hope? We hope that these guys are right?

More so...maybe we hope that these guys are right in the sense that change is needed. Maybe there is something deep within us that cries out that this life is not as it should be. Maybe the shock and awe of death, destruction and the currents of the "American Way," are convincing us of the truth that most of us (if any of us) don't have it together.

There's hope there because the reality of realization speaks to this sense that there is something more perfect for us to grasp. The sort of raw sense might be looked at as Plato and his Forms, or maybe...more sadly...Hegel and his Dialectic.

The sense that holds more hope for me is the idea of Jesus... of how he comes and says, "Gene...you're right...you don't have it together." It's the same thing he told his disciples. It's the same thing he told all the Jewish people. It's the same thing he told the whores and the self-righteous priests. It's the same thing he told the poor and the rich.

So...it's the same thing he's telling us.

And that's hopeful.

On the less serious end, below are the 99 words that started my last 99 posts (titles not included).

1. My
2. When
3. That
4. There's
5. Right
6. In
7. Without
8. A
9. Laura
10. One
11. My
12. If
13. When
14. If
15. Sometimes
16. Something
17. In
18. I
19. When
20. We
21. With
22. We've
23. What
24. A
25. This
26. I'm
27. In
28. La
29. What
30. I
31. I've
32. I
33. I
34. I
35. What
36. It's
37. NPR
38. No
39. Official
40. A
41. The
42. Before
43. I
44. If
45. I
46. Park
47. Blessed
48. If
49. On
50. Yes
51. For
52. There
53. Working
54. My
55. Everyone
56. Many
57. I
58. We've
59. Spending
60. No
61. The
62. I've
63. Sometimes
64. Lately
65. Screaming
66. I
67. For
68. So
69. Tonight
70. A
    
71. Rule
72. If
73. Last
74. Nothing
75. Unfortunately
76. If
77. No
78. Thought
79. What's
80. In
81. We
82. I
83. Lately
84. I'm
85. Your
86. For
87. As
88. So
89. Four
90. You
91. I
92. Crown
93. Update
94. You'd
95. You
96. If
97. There
98. Seriously
99. Last
    

Format

So, I'm thinking of a new format here - something that would be a bit more regular while incorporating both personal and impersonal content. Though, I suppose it will all be "personal," as I don't intend to enlist others to write here.

The plan would be to write 3 or 4 times a week. I'm thinking something along the lines of, "By the Numbers," (I always love segments / articles like that) "Where I've Been," (Travel), Probably something more serious for the weekends, and the "or 4," would be whatever I feel like doing.

Feel free to feed back anything you wouldn't like, would think is wonky*, or just generally uninteresting.

So, I guess this would qualify as a blog about a blog.

(*Wonky is a word that I got from Laura, she heard this from her mother. It is slang for stupid, British slang for unreliable. On an unrelated note, we recently watched the season finale of Extreme Home Makeover ((on our laptops - for those of you wondering, we've still been television-less and will remain so indefinitely)) that featured "Willy Walker" as one of the two owners of a renovated property - a church. So, perhaps the Rev. Willy Walker would be a more appropriate name. All I could think of is to associate him with Willy Wonka and think that he was living in Ray Nagin's Chocolate City. Wonky > Walker > Wonka).

Lazy Blogger...

What's better than thinking of posts that will make one ponder, inspire others, and draw the blogosphere to laughter?

Posting videos that will do the same.

Think (Ponder - we live in a dangerous world)

Inspire (This is one of the reasons I'm leaning heavily towards the man - the speech, not the celebrity endorsements)

Laugh (we did...)

Lazy weekend. Lazy post.

Conversation.

I write with some trepidation today as I know my wife may become angry after reading this... you see, she hates blogs about blogging [i.e. if you're one of those who says "I'm sorry I haven't blogged," she will still read your blog, but only with loathing]. But today isn't one of those - because I blog regularly [only, more infrequently than I used to] so I refuse to apologize for a lack of posts at this juncture.

Into the blog.

How do you Google?

More specifically, when you want information, how do you use Google [or preferred search engine] for your web search? You may think this is crazy, but I generally ask Google the information I want to find - and it usually comes back with a stellar answer.

Today's question: Why Blog? I thought that the answer Google shot back was a little short of incredible. There are, of course, more answers out there - but the common threads were that people wanted to communicate [to be heard] and wanted to be part of something bigger than themselves [you know, like a community of sorts]. It's not necessarily surprising - weren't we told at some point that in the beginning was the Word and that after the Word had created one man, the Word said that it wasn't good for that one man to be alone?

I'm sure I've said or blogged this before, but I think the American ethos has long been one of isolationism [it was part of our national identity - it's a policy the George Washington espoused]. Furthermore, it's spilled over into the American dream - it's what keeps us at arms length from the other families in our neighborhood, the problems of our cities, and what motivates us to move out to the suburbs or the country where our nearest neighbor is a mile [or an acre] away.

In the midst of our loneliness, we long to be together. What is occurring and has been occurring in the blogosphere since 1999 is an ongoing event wherein people seem to feel like they're being listened to - where they have a voice, where they are admired, where they are wanted. Blogging provides a forum where we answer the questions that we wish people were asking us.

To another point, sometimes we blog because we already are part of a community and we wish to continue to the edification, knowledge, and intimacy that already exists there. The blogosphere provides another medium through which we can stay "connected."

Still, it's the juxtaposition of these two images that interested me in the first place: on the one hand you have an individual with typing on a piece of equipment with a connection to the Internet. On the other hand, that individual longs not to remain as they are, but to become something of a larger whole.

Altogether, is that amazing or amazingly sad? Two questions then, Why do you blog? and How do you see your blog integrated into your community?

If you post a response and contact me via e-mail or via comment here, then I'll link up for the sake of dialogue. These are some of the other blogs addressing the same questions that I referenced earlier: Sandhill Trek, The Journal, MarketingProfs Daily Fix, WebMasterView, SoloSEO, iBLOGthere4iM.