What Does One Blog About These Days?

I’m convinced that fewer people are reading blogs, that most people who read blogs are reading fewer of them (or skimming them more selectively) and that neither trend means the death of blogging as a form of communication. Blogging is simply one of an increasing number of options for personal publication and it doesn’t (and never did) suit everyone. But, blogging will prevail for the same reasons that the essay form, the journalistic column and the op-ed piece have sustained an audience.

That said, an increasing number of bloggers are going through an identity crisis. Or, perhaps, it is more of a crisis of purpose? This feels pretty acute amongst bloggers who entered the medium writing a bout about church and faith (the emerging church phenomenon.

For a long time my feeling has been that the best bloggers write from what they do – in the real world. Anything else can (and often does) descend quickly into ranting. I suspect that unless people are actually “leading” (or is that “running”) a church, or heavily involved with churches on a day to day basis, writing about church has limited potential as fuel for a blog for many people. For me, today was a typical Monday – guitar practice, some time composing, a GTD weekly review, cooking, supervising homework and bathtime, household chores, etc. – nothing churchy in an overt sense.

I haven’t made a conscious decision to not blog about church, so much as made a decision to try and blog more about what fills my day to day experience. Right now, that is more about the practicalities of parenting, trying to run a small studio and living as an expat. When I sit down to write something “theological” I increasingly find that I can’t fit into into a suitable format for the blog, or it just comes across as too negative.

My blog writing is long winded at the best of times, but I do try to keep things under 700 words as much as I can. A lot of the churchy topics I try to tackle soon balloon past that, which may indicate the complexity of the problems, but probably points more towards how underdeveloped my proposals and “solutions” really are, at this stage.

But, having been at this game, on and off, for about 8 years, I’m not going to give up on blogging anytime soon and I’d encourage others to rethink abandoning the format (some topics deserve more than 140 characters). Writing from the everyday was what started blogging off and although we have long since moved past the need to fit the “journal” format and write everyday, it’s still the best solution when we are stuck at what to write.

So, what did you do today?