(Or, alternatively, “Why I never seem to post updates as often as I should.”)

I apologize for the lengthy radio silence, at least on this blog, and I haven’t any particularly good reason why. As I look through the list of unpublished posts, I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that I have a veritable pile of posts that are in various states of completeness that were never published—some mostly finished, others sorely out-of-date, and others still little more than a pile of notes.

I think I need to change this, and here’s why.

Lately, I’ve found myself journalling by hand, and I’ve also learned (surprisingly!) that I’m enjoying it. I start with an entry of scripture, I write some comments related to the passage—or to ancillary research I’ve stumbled across—and finalize the entry with a list of prayers. But, the lesson I’ve learned that was most unexpected was how much I enjoy writing entries by hand.

This has achieved two goals: One, my handwriting has markedly improved over a fairly short period of time. I’ve typically avoided writing anything in cursive simply because I’m left-handed and most writing implements are absolutely worthless for mixing left-handed writing with cursive. After having acquired an excellent pen (using Schmidt refills—I’ll write more on this in the future), I’ve found that cursive is virtually effortless compared to print. This surprises me because it’s been more than 30 years since I last wrote cursive with deliberate intent. Two, my proclivities toward verbosity are not as readily indulged when I’m writing by hand compared to writing in front of my computer. I’m a relatively fast typist, so typing tends to follow stream-of-consciousness more readily, and I can author substantial articles in relatively short order. The only limit to the latter is my mind. The former, writing by hand, is limited by my hands. This has aided me in brevity; I now have to think more clearly about what I intend to write because it actually requires work.

However, this also frees up some mental resources while simultaneously encouraging me to continue it elsewhere. As such, I suspect I’ll be writing more articles on my blog in the future.

In any case, I hope to continue posting with more regularity going forward. I’m tempted to clean things up a little bit, maybe redo the template, or archive prior entries. I don’t know for sure. Time will tell, as it does in all things.