Adam’s Peace

It has often been said in the blogging circle that the way to make a self-sustaining blog is to be patient, and provide value.

I like to think that I’m patient… It has been nearly nine months since I started blogging, four months using this domain name. Sometimes, I’ve been distracted with daily life, and others, I’ve posted daily. What hasn’t changed is that I have always come back to add something more.

The question, though, is what value do people get from this blog? In its first lifetime, this blog was here to answer random questions, such as why printers jam when you’re in a hurry, why the grass is green, and what was the meaning behind a dream’s symbols. (That last one earned me my first long-time reader, Jeff Lilly of DruidJournal.net.)

Shortly before answering Jeff’s question, I had decided to change the topic of the blog from random questions to write about general personal development. The loss of my database (I was hosting the site on my own personal computer at the time) made the transition a lot easier, as I didn’t have as much ‘baggage’ from past posts to deal with, although the answers that I gave at the time are unfortunately lost in the ether. Writing about personal development in general, though, was beyond my scope, and I was in the process of starting to live my life purpose, to bring peace to everybody.

The third life of this blog started a couple of months before I switched domain names and servers. I narrowed my topic down to talking about inner peace. Sometimes, I have strayed from this topic, and other times, I have remained extremely faithful, but the purpose of this blog has always been to encourage other people to talk about inner peace, whether here, or in their own domains. Jeff has done so many times, as has Kara-Leah, Slade, Damian, Angela-Eloise, and many others who are unfortunately cursed by my bad memory, so won’t be receiving a link until I edit this post and add them.

A character created by Orson Scott Card, named Ender Wiggins, once said that it is alright to die, as long as you’re always reborn.

So, it is time for this blog to be reborn again.

All jokes of Pagans being Reborn-Agains aside, it is time for a change. I would like to revive part of what made the blog good in the beginning, and keep part of what keeps this blog good now. I want more reader involvement, because, at the heart, the message is never what is intended by the author. The message is always what the recipient receives.

To do that, I am re-inviting the random questions, although I ask that the questions be limited to inner peace. The definition of inner peace is broad, though, as are the methods for growing your own peacefulness, so if I’m asked, I will write about why the sky is blue, in the hopes that the answer will bring a measure of peace to someone.

Keep in mind that my ‘religion’ is Universalism, and I am comfortable discussing quotes from the Old Testament along side philosophical ruminations, Tao, and pagan rites and symbolism. I am also scientifically minded, where I keep as much separation between objective and subjective observations as I keep a separation between two sides of a coin. Objectivity and subjectivity are not the same, but they can not exist without the other, so I strive to keep a healthy balance between the two.

So, I am officially inviting any and all questions, with the intent to bring peace to everybody. If you have a question, feel free to use either the Contact Form or scroll down to the bottom and leave a comment on any post. I also encourage everyone who reads to also participate and help answer the questions as well, as I’m not the only source of inspiration and peace, and often, you’ll be surprised at how much peace you can spread, as well as gain for yourself, just by trying to help someone else.

Here’s the new closing for each of my posts from now on:

If you have a question about peace, in any of its forms, feel free to use the Contact Form or leave a comment on this post. If you would like to add to this answer in any way, feel free to leave a comment here.

I’m testing out a feature that is built into Wordpress… I’m allowing people to register as users, with the default role of subscriber. This should allow people to take a moment and register, then they’ll never have to fill out the name, email, and URL sections again when they’re making comments.

I’m not sure of additional features that users may have, but I intend to check them out and edit this post accordingly.

Edit: Evidently, besides just making the comments easier to deal with, you get access to the Admin Dashboard. Of course, you don’t have any rights to edit anything (I made *very* certain of that), but you can see some of the behind-the-scenes information, such as the titles of upcoming posts and how long until they’re posted (don’t worry, there aren’t any upcoming posts right now, so you’re not missing out), see who wrote the last 5 comments, and what thread they were written in, see the names of the last 5 posts ( yeah, *that’s* real useful… sure… ), and see some of my Technorati information. Along with that, you can see basic stats, such as how many posts I’ve published in how many different categories, how many comments there are, and how much spam Akismet has blocked.

It’s interesting, but not the most useful information in the world. I suppose the biggest benefit that I can see is, if someone is in the habit of post-dating a post, you can see what the name is going to be and how long you have to wait for it.

The server where this site is served from had a major failure yesterday.

Thankfully, they kept backups, because I haven’t been keeping up on backups like I should.

Yesterday’s post on AGLOCO was reverted to the state that it was yesterday morning… unfinished and unposted. If you made a comment yesterday before the site went down, it is lost in the ether. I’ll be re-finishing the lost post up today, and today’s post will be a day late as well. At least most of the information has been recovered.

Thank you for your patience, and let’s hope that this doesn’t happen again.

Now if I could just write a script that emails me a differential backup every time a post is made or a comment is left… That would be handy.