Reboot

Once upon a time, I had a blog. I wrote in it fairly regularly. It was titled Hints and Guesses, after a line from T. S. Eliot's "Four Quartets". This title was meant to convey a modicum of humility in order to temper the pride of the opinions expressed blogger who posted beneath it. Overall it must be said that I was not a very good blogger. When I wasn't expressing my opinions or sharing the minutia of my life in a vague and self-defeating way, I was throwing out snippets of poetry--mostly the sort of unedited free verse worthy of freshman level creative writing courses.

My habits as a blogger were so abysmal that in the past year as I have considered rebooting that blog I've always been daunted by task of overcoming it's sad history and the fact that all my previous posts would be there, my sophomoric whining, my self-important vagaries. It has been enough to make me wish to never draw any more attention to the thing on the off chance someone clicks the "older posts" link.

So to save myself such embarrassment, and to set a completely new tone I decided the only appropriate course of action would be to start a new blog. A more disciplined blog. Or rather a blog upon which the writer would be more disciplined, both in quantity as well as quality. A blog where I could discipline myself as a writer so that some day what is posted here may actually be worth reading. While I cannot guarantee that day will ever come, I am hoping in the coming year to at least post regularly, I'll start off shooting for weekly. And as far as quality is concerned I'm hoping the posts will be more than rambling free form poetry or convoluted references to the events of my life. The topics of these as yet to be written essays in the art of blogging? Well, I will probably stick to what I know think about most of the time: philosophy, theology, politics, literature, and poetry. And by poetry I don't mean my own attempts at it, but rather thoughts on other people's poetry, poetry that legitimately may be worth someone else reading.

A final note on the title, for those who may be interested (hi Mom!). In a further effort to grow in virtue, I am invoking two more prophets of humility in Søren Kierkegaard and the Apostle Paul. Fearful Hints and Trembling guesses interpolates the reference to Eliot's "Quartets" with a reference to the title of Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling", which is itself a reference to Philippians 2:12. The work by Kierkegaard is a book I read years ago and, though I have never revisited it (unlike Eliot's "Quartets" or Paul's letter to the Philippians), it has marked my thinking about what it means to live in authentic humility as a human being both as I relate to God and to the world.

So, here we are, the reboot is beginning. Comments will of course be welcome, though I will likely not respond with any frequency. Nevertheless I appreciate any investment in this project from others. Thanks for reading.