The Pietist Schoolman

According to WordPress, this is my 1000th post at The Pietist Schoolman. Now, I know bloggers who publish that much every year (or even more often than that), but their posts tend to consist of long quotations from other sources with some brief commentary. Since mine are most often original essays of 1000-1500 words, the fact that I’ve reached this landmark not quite three years into my blogging career leaves me a little flabbergasted.

And more than a little tired.

In fact, this seems like a good moment to adopt a change that I’ve been considering for a few months now: rather than try to keep up my longstanding daily pace, I’m going to move to posting only three days a week (plus the links wrap on Saturday).

I do this with some trepidation: one of the main reasons that I started blogging is that I wanted to challenge myself to write something every day. I do think that that discipline has made me a better writer, but I have enough other projects in the works that I’m less concerned about failing to take time each day to write.

And in any case, something needs to give with my workload. This past weekend was convicting in that respect.

On Saturday I simply felt exhausted, as the realization sank in that even though I’d turned spring grades in on Friday, the summer would hardly be a respite. I’m co-leading one workshop today, presenting at another one tomorrow, turning in the copyedited manuscript of our Pietism and higher ed book as soon as possible, preparing for a strategic planning workshop at Bethel next week, getting geared up to teach a summer course at the end of the month, and working on a digital history project about Bethel in wartime.

Unfortunately, none of that can give. And my relationships with family, friends, and God have already been put second far too often in recent years. So when we visited my grandfather’s church yesterday and heard a sermon on the 4th Commandment, it was clear that reducing my blogging output would be a small price to pay to restore some time for rest and relationships to my life.

My goal is to blog most often on Mondays and Wednesdays, plus one other day as the schedule allows. But on off-days, I’ll probably do a bit more sharing links via the blog’s Facebook page — so make sure to Like that page if you haven’t already done so. Or if you stop by here on a day I’ve got nothing new to say, sample some of the other blogs that I recommend.

As always, thanks for reading and commenting!