153,720,259

Nobody had personal computers when I was born in 1976. Ok, so maybe some NASA genius or some delusional James Bond fanatic had a personal computer back then but VERY FEW people had them. That’s because the first real personal computer, the Sphere 1 computer, was created in Bountiful, Utah in 1975 by computer pioneer Michael D. Wise (1949–2002). Today most of us can’t imagine life without a computer. We are practically given a keyboard or an Iphone as a congratulatory prize upon birth. I can pretty much guarantee that no infant in 1976 was using a personal computer. I am not so sure that is the case today.
The website BlogPulse estimates, as I read it now, that 153,720,258 blogs already exist. I am just about positive that of those is probably run by an infant. Ok, so make that 153,720,259. Now I too am just another statistic and, for all practical purposes, I am an infant in terms of my blogging experience. I’ve tried to get into the whole blah, blah, blog thing before but it just never took. But, this year is going to be different. My goal is to blog at least once a month. I know that’s not much, “baby steps” if you will, but if my imaginary baby-blogger can do it then so can I. Truthfully, (confession time) I am horrible at making myself write. Richard Fenn, one of my favorite professors from my seminary days at Princeton once told me that I can have a million great ideas but none of them count until they are on paper. Well this isn’t paper exactly but it’s a start.
I used to always be concerned that when I wrote something it wasn’t perfect and thus wasn’t presentable. But after I read on Royal Pingdom that 7.7 million people are following Lady Gaga on Twitter (@ladygaga) I figured “what the heck”. I mean c’mon, there’s not much chance that you’ll see me erupting from anywhere anytime soon wearing a firework shooting bustier so I think most of what I put out there will be considered fairly tame in comparison to the greater Gaga consuming public.
That being said, the Bible is pretty explicit about taming one’s tongue and I’m pretty sure that applies to my keyboard as well. Nonetheless, technology has sped up just a tiny bit since the Biblical Narrative was written and even since the semi-glorified birth of yours truly. I would absolutely love to know WJWD on a blog. I am pretty sure he’d be sending out disciples all over the Internet, Podcasting the Beatitudes and Dopplr-ing his next stop so that the people could get their miracle healing on. Lady Gaga has got nothing on that.
My blogging certainly won’t live up to such lofty expectations but maybe it will help me to use the nifty new mediums we been given to work on myself a little bit in the process. So here we go blog #153,720,259 – we all start somewhere.