A year has passed, and I still find myself at times having difficulty reaching my goal of three to four posts per month, but on the whole it has proven manageable. Sometimes I have found myself at a lost at what to write about and some of postings have seemed in retrospect rather less-than-compelling. Nevertheless, I have usually found it an enjoyable challenge to find interesting topics on which to write. Furthermore, the opportunity to write on subjects that interest me and then share my thoughts with others has proven rather gratifying. I don’t know what this coming year will bring (except for a return to the U.S.—perhaps more on that later), but I am hopeful that I will be able to continue posting and that at least somebody will continue to read my musings!
Image of birthday cake from cakes-you-can-bake.com It’s almost hard for me to believe, but approximately one year ago I started this blog. Before starting it, I had maintained two other blogs and had learned a few lessons from the experience. One was that it doesn’t pay to be too ambitious. In the case of at least one of my original blogs, I attempted to post one to two times a week. I found, however, that as an often busy teacher and father that wasn’t’ too realistic. Hence, in the case of my new blog, I decided that I would aim for three to four posts a month, which I felt would be more manageable. Another lesson was that there is a need for coherence in writing a blog. I came to feel that in my original blogs I was trying to cover too many subjects and consequently they seemed to lack a clear theme. Yet another lesson learned was the need to offer something different. It seemed that some of what I was writing—particularly my commentary on U.S. politics—did not seem particularly original. Therefore, I decided to restrict my blog topics to subjects involving the life of the mind and faith—still a somewhat broad theme, but at least somewhat more restrictive, and one that I hoped would allow me to provide some distinctive perspectives.
A year has passed, and I still find myself at times having difficulty reaching my goal of three to four posts per month, but on the whole it has proven manageable. Sometimes I have found myself at a lost at what to write about and some of postings have seemed in retrospect rather less-than-compelling. Nevertheless, I have usually found it an enjoyable challenge to find interesting topics on which to write. Furthermore, the opportunity to write on subjects that interest me and then share my thoughts with others has proven rather gratifying. I don’t know what this coming year will bring (except for a return to the U.S.—perhaps more on that later), but I am hopeful that I will be able to continue posting and that at least somebody will continue to read my musings!
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AuthorStephen W. Hoyle currently teaches classes in Language Arts and Latin at a private school in the Washington, DC area. Previously, he taught English as a Second Language (ESL) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) at universities in the United States and China. He received a bachelor's degree in international relations from the University of Virginia and a master's degree in linguistics from George Mason University. In addition to China, he has lived in Belgium and Taiwan, and traveled extensively in Europe. His interests include language (having studied French, Latin, modern Mandarin Chinese, classical Chinese, Japanese, and koine Greek), education, philosophy and Christian theology, literature (mainly poetry), history, and classical music. He is married to an immigrant from China and has a daughter who is a college student. Archives
April 2024
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