Continuing the Convo... dudes

photo © 2008 Horia Varlan | more info (via: Wylio)

I just missed my bloggerversary. Six years now. She's getting to be such a big girl. (Yes, I know I mixed metaphors. Quiet.)

Please don't bother looking up the old posts. Basically run-on diaries - that's what Facebook is for nowadays. Often just musings. But generally, meh...

About a year and a half ago, I realized that I was spending a lot of time on long Facebook posts to fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals particularly. And that time was mostly writing out thoughtful responses to passionate (and sometimes not-as-thoughtful) statements. I realized that I wasn't getting through, but if I wanted to communicate effectively and quickly, then I would take that energy and write a post. When I ran across a meme, I could just point them to my blog.

For the past year and a half or so, I've begun to reinvent my blogging to extend my thoughts beyond just definitive definites. I'm slowly re-learning blogging and - more importantly - dialog. Meanwhile, I've been even slowly-er learning to ask more questions.

If you look to the right, you'll see a few blogrolls. The ones on the top are the ones I read the most. They're not all Christians. They're not all Evangelicals. They're not all Americans. They're not all progressive (though I think everybody in that list fits into at least one of the rubrics). They are my most frequented blogs, and as such I consider that much of what I do here is engaging in conversation with them.

Some of whom I know only through their writing, never formally having had a chance to talk directly with them. Others I know or have met in real life. Some I've had the chance to blog with. And quite a few are real friends, but I've yet to meet them in the 3D.

It's all a part of what I'm trying to learn to do. Continue the conversation. I'm so used to trying to end it. Thinking - like I did with my dad when I was twelve - that I was so sure, so cocksure that I had the answers.

Mostly to questions that nobody was answering.

That pattern is hard to break. So please bare with me as I try to engage and ask more questions. I might even ask some of the right questions.

Maybe?