NaBloPoMa

I haven't posted to my blog since June and I just found out that this is NaBloPoMa: National Blog Posting Month, when we are supposed to post daily.

Now doesn't that sound a little like NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month (which has been around since, like, forever)? And what a coincidence, they are both being held in November. I guess there are just so many Na....Mo's out there, and so few months, that the organizers couldn't find another month to squeeze NaBloPoMa in!

So even tho I'm not doing NaNoWriMo, I've decided to boycott NaBloPoMa in protest of their lack of originality. Not that it means much since, like I said, I haven't posted for five months anyway! But I just had to get my 2 cents in here.

I call on would-be novelists and lukewarm bloggers to unite!

Rebooting the Blog...

It's embarrassing to look at my blog and see how long it's been since I've posted anything. A few weeks ago I changed the name -- it was at first called "My Non-Political Blog" b/c so many of the blogs I've seen are political, but really that name was supposed to be a "place holder" until I thot of something more original or catchy. Finally, I changed it to the old phrase which we first heard from Ken Durst, Here Today... Gone to Mali.

My biggest problem, I suppose, has been writer's block -- a whole year's worth, from the look of things! Then I saw a format which my colleague/Facebook friend, Mali-Anta, follows:
* Sunday – Quotes for the week
* Monday / Tuesday – Life Model topics
* Wednesday without words – Malian photos
* Thursday / Friday – Anthropology and culture topics
* Saturday – Book reviews

I like the idea of some kind of structure; it saves me from having to agonize over what to write. So here is what I will try:
*Sunday/Monday: Quote of the Week (I collect quotes all the time, this will give me something to do with them for once!)
*Monday/Tuesday: Malian Life & Culture
*Wednesday without Words (WWW): Pictures
*Thursday/Friday: Book Reviews
*Friday/Saturday: Current Event Commentary or Personal Journaling

I may not post on every topic every week, and as you can see, I don't want to commit to an exact day for each post (only WWW wouldn't work on another day!). I will probably also post our monthly prayer letters as they are published, b/c they too give a glimpse of our lives.

And all this is assuming anyone even reads this!

But I wanna be a political blogger...!

Everybody knows it's the political bloggers who get famous, like Michelle Malkin or Mike Adams. Occasionally the religious ones make a name for themselves, like Al Mohler, but I'm not quite in his league. We're both Baptist, but that's all.

The problem is that politics make me very uncomfortable. I just hate the partisanship, the nastiness and the name-calling that goes along with it. And I don't like conflict, so I'm not comfortable debating politics.

And I really hate the thought of getting pigeonholed. Like I wasn't really in favor of the war in Iraq in the first place, so that puts me on the side of the Dems or the lefties or the progressives, choose your epithet. But now that we're in Iraq, I think we would be crazy to just pull out -- so I guess I'm a Republican or a conservative or something.

Take gun control -- I believe in the right to bear arms as enshrined in the 2nd Amendment. But I do not see why that right has to extend to assault weapons and all the crazy stuff Mike Adams buys for himself all the time; so I favor some limited gun control. So what am I?

I read about this woman the other day, a conservative evangelical like me, with a son in Iraq (unlike me) who has started peacefully protesting the war. Basically, everyone who thinks the way she does on other issues (pro-life, etc.) reviles her for this, and those who agree with her about the war revile her for her stance on typically conservative issues. Didn't someone say, If everyone hates you, you must be doing something right? I guess that's where she fits in.

So here I am, a non-political blogger, doomed to anonymity.