A Change of Focus

So... with the new year and all (and the year and a half of silence), I think it's about time to... refocus this blog a little. When it started out, it was mostly about atheism. I'm likely to still have something to say about that subject, of course, but there are other things I want to write about too. A year after the blog launched, I admitted I was gay. And... well, that's another thing I'm likely to want to write about some.

But I think maybe the main thing I'm going to want to focus this blog on is skepticism and critical thinking. Because really, that's the root of everything else. It's critical thinking that leads to recognizing the lack of foundation of religion. It would certainly be silly to say it was critical thinking that made me gay... but critical thinking does lead to more acceptance of that and other traits, by, again, helping to recognize the baselessness of discrimination. Ultimately, I think critical thinking is one of the most important things to try to foster.

Anyway, we'll see how the blog develops over this next year. There are a few things I want to do fairly soon, though. I'm going to make a few changes to that blogroll on the right... there are a few other blogs I ought to add, and at least one of the blogs that is listed there is no longer updating, and should maybe be removed. (Well, several of them haven't updated in a while, but one of them has officially declared itself inactive.) But also, I should make a new introductory post. I already have an introductory post—it was the first post on this blog—but a lot has changed since then, and it's pretty badly out of date.

And then, yeah, I'll get to making some more substantive posts. Never did get around to finishing that series on the Seven Deadly Sins... But in the meantime... yeah, I've got a lot on my plate...

Happy New Year!

Well, it's a new year... and it's a year and a half since my last post. In which I said it had been "way too long" since my last post before that, and said I'd post more later. Which, I guess, I now technically have, even if it's more than a year and a half later...

Yeah, okay, a big part of my reason for not posting has, obviously, been the fact that I've been busy. First with my teaching job, and then (I wasn't rehired for this academic year)... well, with other things. Such as acting. Yeah, I'm not making enough as an actor to make a living at it yet, but I've been doing pretty well; I've got an IMDb page now with a number of credits. (Which, of course, I'm not going to link to, since that would kind of go against the whole anonymity thing.) In fact, it's to the point now where I'm called by my stage name more often than by my real name; even my current roommate is someone who I met through acting and who calls me by my stage name. (He does know my real name; he's just not used to using it.)

So, yeah, I guess while I'm anonymous here, I'm otherwise polyonymous. But anyway...

So, anyway, I've been busy, and that's part of the problem. But another part is that as I fell behind, the comments piled up on past posts, and responding to all those comments seemed an increasingly daunting task. And made me somewhat unwilling to resume this blog and face them.

Oh, I'm not referring to friendly comments offering support, or even those that respectfully disagree or ask honest questions; those don't bother me. I can deal with them. It's the comments of people who seem intent on starting a debate, or on just plain attacking. That's not what I started this blog for. I don't like debating. I don't think I'm bad at it; I just don't enjoy it. I don't want to debate. Seriously. I have things I want to say, but I'm really not interested in arguing about them.

Yeah, I know; I don't have to respond. But the problem was... well, I guess the main problem was, I didn't want it to look like I didn't have a response. In fact, in many cases (maybe even most cases), I'd already addressed the matters brought up in the comment in another post the commenter evidently hadn't read, or even in the same post the comment was in reply to, the commenter apparently having only glanced at the subject of the post and made assumptions about its contents without actually reading it. So it's not like responding would have been difficult. But with so many posts to respond to... and the inevitability, based on past experience, that some of the commenters would have returned with objections that must be responded to, or tried to play word games to twist what I said, or... ugh.

But you know what? Ultimately, I guess, this is all a matter of pride. It's all just because I don't want these people to think I can't answer their arguments. Why should I care? Especially given that this blog is anonymous, so they don't even know who I am? Why should it matter if they think they've out-argued me? Especially since even if I do reply, they're likely to dismiss my reply and go on thinking they've won anyway?

So you know I've decided? The heck with past comments. I may respond to some if I feel like it, but I won't feel obligated. And that goes with future comments too. I'm going to try not to worry about responding to them. I might respond to some comments if I feel like it (particularly if they're not argumentative), but I'm not going to feel obligated to respond to them all. I'm not going to actually delete comments unless they're clearly spam or obscene, but I may decide to ignore them. If people want to think the reason I'm not responding is because they've stumped me with their brilliant arguments, eh, let them think that. I don't have time to deal with it.

In fact, I'm not even going to look at any comments on past posts tonight. Maybe later, to see if there's anything interesting I missed. But for now, I'll just make this post, and go to bed. (Well, maybe check out a few other blogs I haven't checked out in a while first.)

Anyway, though, I'll try to be a little more active on this blog this year than I was last year. Which shouldn't be hard, given that last year I made a grand total of zero posts. But seriously, I do still have some things I want to say, and maybe this year I'll find time to say them. And if anyone reading this wants to get into an argument about them... please, find someone else to argue with. Thanks.