Ephesians 6:4
Well… that is yet another Biblical command I have broken…
This week I noticed that the number of unique hits on my blog had suddenly increased. That was unusual since I had been at conference last week and hadn’t been posting anything regularly… I will post a few reflections on the conference over the next few days, but I’ve been too busy until now… So I was a bit surprised to see so many new visitors in such a short period of time.
Then last night my poor, long suffering, eldest son, Owain, informed me that someone in his class had stumbled on my blog when googling the names of other members of his class, and, having found various references to Owain, had promptly circulated them around the whole class… So, at least temporarily my average hit rate is up, but the average age of my readers is way, way down…
But it made me rethink the reason I blog…
There is no doubt that part of it was originally a cut-price, electronic form of vanity publishing. A number of things I had written had either languished in a publishers in tray for an annoying length of time, while others were too ephemeral to be bothered killing a tree for, so committing them to virtual immortality seemed a reasonable way to make them accessible to anyone else who might want to use them. Most were originally written for a particular context, so I don’t need or want to make any financial profit from them, so if anyone else wants to use them great… Although maybe in years to come I too will be involved in outrageous copyright litigation like the many claimants to the “Footprints” poem…
The second reason was that for years people I respect have urged me to journal, but in much the same way that I turn up to play football because there is a team of people expecting me to be there, whilst I can always find 3 million excuses to put off the solitary experience of going to the gym, a journal which is only ever going to be read by me requires too much by way of self-discipline. Whilst this blog can hardly be described as a deeply reflective spiritual journal, it is probably as close as I am ever going to get, with my small but regular readership keeping me posting…
But now I have a third reason for blogging… Winding up my teenage son! It is a formative part of the father-son experience…
So, for the benefit of all my son’s googling peers… Owain Campton… Owain Campton… Owain Campton…
This week I noticed that the number of unique hits on my blog had suddenly increased. That was unusual since I had been at conference last week and hadn’t been posting anything regularly… I will post a few reflections on the conference over the next few days, but I’ve been too busy until now… So I was a bit surprised to see so many new visitors in such a short period of time.
Then last night my poor, long suffering, eldest son, Owain, informed me that someone in his class had stumbled on my blog when googling the names of other members of his class, and, having found various references to Owain, had promptly circulated them around the whole class… So, at least temporarily my average hit rate is up, but the average age of my readers is way, way down…
But it made me rethink the reason I blog…
There is no doubt that part of it was originally a cut-price, electronic form of vanity publishing. A number of things I had written had either languished in a publishers in tray for an annoying length of time, while others were too ephemeral to be bothered killing a tree for, so committing them to virtual immortality seemed a reasonable way to make them accessible to anyone else who might want to use them. Most were originally written for a particular context, so I don’t need or want to make any financial profit from them, so if anyone else wants to use them great… Although maybe in years to come I too will be involved in outrageous copyright litigation like the many claimants to the “Footprints” poem…
The second reason was that for years people I respect have urged me to journal, but in much the same way that I turn up to play football because there is a team of people expecting me to be there, whilst I can always find 3 million excuses to put off the solitary experience of going to the gym, a journal which is only ever going to be read by me requires too much by way of self-discipline. Whilst this blog can hardly be described as a deeply reflective spiritual journal, it is probably as close as I am ever going to get, with my small but regular readership keeping me posting…
But now I have a third reason for blogging… Winding up my teenage son! It is a formative part of the father-son experience…
So, for the benefit of all my son’s googling peers… Owain Campton… Owain Campton… Owain Campton…
ps. I had toyed with the idea of dropping a baby-photograph of Owain into this blog, but then I thought he probably wouldn't speak to me again for a number of decades!
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owain campton
ps. ... And Decades... And Decades