Some Blogging Goals for 2007

It’s that time again, when thoughts turn to what the new year has in store. Now that we have star­ted to settle down in Hong Kong, I’ve been put­ting a lot of ser­i­ous thought into the future dir­ec­tion of this blog. Of course, that is in some ways tied to my think­ing about voca­tion, writ­ing, music and so on, but to some extent this blog has a life of it’s own as well. So here, more or less, are my goals for 2007.

More Theo­logy and Cul­ture. My aca­demic interests focus on issues related to ethics, faith, cul­ture, reli­gion, eco­nom­ics, glob­al­isa­tion, edu­ca­tion, polit­ics and spir­itu­al­ity. These coalesce in a pro­ject I call Theo­logy and Cul­ture, which I really defined for myself in the late 90s. How­ever, the time has come to rethink this and try to pub­lish new work in this area.

Less on the Emer­ging Church. Spe­cific­ally, less about the con­cep­tual debates around what is, or is not the emer­ging church and the con­flicts between sup­port­ers and defend­ers of the movement.

More Reviews. I’m very pleased to be writ­ing more film reviews again, but I want to break through the block­ages that stop me writ­ing more music and book reviews.

Less Dig­ging Up The Past. I re-started this blog as a way to deal with a pile of unfin­ished work and the feel­ings they aroused. Whilst that arche­olo­gical task is not com­plete, it still gets more atten­tion on this blog than it should. It some ways it is chok­ing new ideas and pro­jects and it is time to close down and let go of some pro­jects that never quite made it.

More On Expat­ri­ate Issues. I want to dig deeper into the prob­lems of global mobil­ity, the cre­at­ive class and living away from (or without a) home in more detail.

Less On Places I Used To Live. Not that I have stopped think­ing about London, Delhi or Sydney, but I don’t live there any­more and in the case of the last two, prob­ably will never live there again. These are global cities, so in one sense they will always have an interest for me, but they get too much atten­tion on this blog.

More On Every­day Spir­itu­al­ity. I feel that some of my best writ­ing and think­ing has been on the issue of every­day faith, the small things we do to build a sense of con­nec­tion and mean­ing. But whilst I’m very focussed on that, it doesn’t seem to register much on this blog.

Less On The Big Agen­das of Christen­dom. I devote too much time to evan­gel­ic­al­ism, to the reli­gious right, to the buzzword trends in Chris­tian mar­ket­ing to the cul­ture wars. There are other blogs devoted to that stuff and they do it better than me. Besides, those things are almost totally dis­con­nec­ted from how I actu­ally live. Besides, these debates are often so toxic, so polar­ised that it feels dirty just to report them. So, I’m declar­ing a hol­i­day (or moratorium)from it all.

More On Music. This is a head­ache for me. My blog­ging is dis­con­nec­ted from my music. I’m not sure what the solu­tion is — pod­cast­ing, another blog, more clips. Whatever it is, by this time next year my blog needs to reflect my musical work more closely.

Less On The Blo­go­sphere. Tech­nor­ati, blog-fasts, rank­ings, etc. Yes, it is all an addict­ive trap, yes many A-listers are that obnox­ious, yes the coolest blogs fly just under the radar. But I’ve already said that over and over.

More Fresh New Blog­gers. It might even be as cliched as new blog­ger monday, or some­thing like that. There are so, so many worth­while blogs out there wait­ing to be discovered.

Less Bio­graph­ical His­tory. Every good blog is bio­graph­ical, but I’m going to be spend­ing less blog-time focussed on my dis­tant past. School days, time at theo­lo­gical col­lege, and the such have been fil­ters through which I’ve approached a lot of topics. In 2007, I’m going to try a dif­fer­ent, more con­tem­por­ary approach.

More Glob­al­isa­tion. Food, fash­ion, sport, eco­nom­ics, art — more, more, more.

Less Neg­at­iv­ity. This has been a big goal through this year. Some­thing snapped for me in 2005. I got to the point where I couldn’t take any more of the habit of “saying some­thing neg­at­ive to say some­thing pos­it­ive.” Some­how I learnt the habit train­ing for min­istry and hanging around church circles and I real­ised it had to go. How­ever, it’s hard to do that without dis­en­ga­ging from some people and from some con­ver­sa­tions. It’s a ten­sion I will con­tinue to explore.

More On Cre­ativ­ity. — I want to explore fur­ther the cre­at­ive pro­cess, espe­cially as it per­tains to writ­ing, theo­lo­gical reflec­tion, music and improvisation.

This isn’t quite com­plete and maybe doesn’t make sense, but it is where my think­ing is cur­rently at for this blog. There’s a few more areas I’m con­sid­er­ing and maybe some changes, but for now this is the big ideas.