Lotus and Lily Field Notes

I have been getting all riled up the last week or so, thinking about the first anniversary of this blog, when in fact it’s been almost 13 months.  Innocuous beginnings captured here.  However, time being a construct within the context of relative reality, it’s still worth an about-this-blog muse.  There are a few things I’ve learned since I started, about blogging and about myself:

1. It’s fun!  There have been many times in the last year+ when it’s been just wonderful to sit down and confide in, share thoughts with, spin ideas to, and occasionally whine at this little box on my screen.
2. It is certainly hard to keep up, especially in a meaningful way, especially when the carefully nurtured balance of my multi-faceted life is challenged by one or another form of intensity.  Looking at that list of Blogisattva award candidates (and other excellent blogs I read, including those on this blog’s list of links) I’m struck by how many are authored by academics or students or others who have full-time religion-spirituality oriented gigs.  Don’t get me wrong, I am generally very happy not to be embroiled in “the life,” as we might as well call it.  But one of the consequences of being a tiller-of-the-soil as well as a spouter-off-about-the-inner-life is that there is often just less in the well at the end of the day than I’d like there to be.
3. I thought this medium was somehow going to start providing seeds for lengthier and more thoughtful pieces of writing (you know, articles, books, encyclopedias…).   In part because of #2 above, in part because of the way I’m blogging, and in part because of the nature of the medium, this has proven less true than I’d hoped.  I am a little frustrated about this, a little resigned, but fortunately still curious and open to whatever possibilities might yet unfold.  The plain truth, so far, is that thoughtful sustained writing takes even more time than I have to devote to the fragmentary sketches I post here.
4. I am also puzzled by the question of audience and readership.  For a long time I paid absolutely no attention to who and how many my readers are; a few months ago I took the plunge and enabled Google Analytics.  That gave me some information that I have acted on to some extent, and ignored to some extent.  I can’t say thinking about this doesn’t make a difference, but as yet I don’t believe it’s pushed me in any particular direction.  Nor has my resolution to “blog better.”  This has, like most resolutions, built up a certain back pressure of expectation without any particular tangible results.

The upshot is that I am very much still finding my way, hoping to find a useful music here, but meanwhile just continuing to bang away on randomly chosen pots and pans, hating the cacophony much of the time, thinking sometimes that maybe it sounds a bit like music, and hoping that at least those who stumble across this venue will at least think I’m attempting to cook up something worth eating.

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