Blog Post One Thousand

I’ve been writing this blog since 2002, that is, for more than 13 years. According to my very first post, I was inspired by an article in Time to begin this project. That first post was a promise of things to come, and, in retrospect, was a fair introduction. I changed the formatting of the blog at some point, however, so that the links referred to in the post as being on the left are now on the right. It isn’t practical to keep such references up-to-date, though I do occasionally change a link that’s no longer correct.

This blog post is my one-thousandth effort, which means that I have written an essay here about once every five days for 13 years.

In that first post, I implied that my blog, like my Web site, would be eclectic. I suggested that many posts would deal with political subjects. Little did I realize that well over half my posts would be religion-related. You can check this out on my blog’s Table of Contents, an unusual feature of my blog that I created to make it easier to find old posts. (The Table of Contents classified posts as religious, language-related, blog-related, and everything else, including political topics.)

I know more about what I write, of course, than who reads what I write. Posts about The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion tend to attract more readers that other essays, and, since I do write about religion a lot, I feel justified in having a Blogging Episcopalian badge on my blog pages. Many readers are clearly Episcopalians. Some readers, mostly Episcopalians, I presume, have signed up to receive notice of my church-related posts.

I wish I had more readers of my political and linguistic posts. I probably don’t write enough about such topics to attract a regular readership, however. My occasional poems that I post seem to be read least of all (sigh!). If any of you reading this are poetry fans, check out the Poetry section of my Web site.

When I began writing my blog, I did not provide for comments. I was concerned that reading and responding to comments could become a serious time sink. (Posts on Father Jake Stops the World, a blog I read regularly, often attracted more than 100 comments.) As it happens, I needn’t have worried and would usually like to see more comments and genuine discussion on the site. I am told that many blogs are attracting fewer comments these days—some of the conversation has moved to Facebook, for example—though lively conversations are common on Thinking Anglicans and blogs hosted by periodicals. Are my posts insufficiently stimulating, or are they so comprehensive that there is little left to say? I have no idea. Would anyone like to explain why they never leave comments?

Anyway, thanks for reading. I hope you will find the next thousand posts worth reading.