Today is my blog's fourth birthday!
This year, I mostly blogged through my academic reading for my comprehensive examinations. And my blogging helped me immensely on my comps, for going through my blogs about the books that I read planted or reinforced things in my mind that I used on those tests.
Now that I've passed my comps, I'm still blogging through academic books. I'm doing so in order to gain more knowledge, which will help me once I start to write articles and teach. I hope to be writing book reviews for publication, thereby building my CV.
Some people may have been turned off by my academic posts, but others have found them helpful. Personally, I can identify with those who don't find those posts appealing, since they might not strike people as all that edifying. I think that the historical-critical method can be seen the way that a commenter described it under a post I wrote on Leviticus 11, in which I discuss Baruch Levine's presentation of reasons for the dietary laws: "So this kinda proves a divine intelligence at work and not a bunch of ancient carnal lugheads trying to palm off their own ideas!"
But I'll continue to write these posts, and it's not just to prepare myself professionally. There's something therapeutic about it. Having to work through an academic piece of literature---as I summarize or evaluate a scholar's argument, and seek something in it that I find interesting---takes my mind off of my problems and my negative emotions. And there is a sense of accomplishment that I feel after I write my academic posts. I'm not sure what to do with scholarly insights on a theological basis, but maybe that will come together some day.
So expect more posts on religious scholarship! But I will also blog about other things, such as church, Stephen King, movies, etc.