Shoot The Moose

I've always felt that NOT doing something just because it is popular or cliche is just as shallow and superficial as doing something just because everybody else is doing it. (Have you ever noticed that even non-conformists seem to have a dress-code?). As a result, I've never joined the "I don't do New Year's resolutions because I'm smarter than the unwashed masses" crowd. I do them, and I do so proudly. It doesn't matter that 90% of them fail. You can't score if you don't shoot the puck.

So, I'll be posting my resolutions for the new year, one per day. Today, I turn my attention to this blog. My resolution is two-fold.

First, I'm going to move my posting times to the nighttime or early morning. I post (and read other blogs) WAY too much on company time. Although I could rationalize it and say it isn't affecting my work, that doesn't make it right. The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation does not pay me to read and post on blogs. (I still reserve the right to do so on my lunch hour, though).

The second part of the resolution is more vague: I want to figure out just what it is I want Shoot The Moose to be, and make it that.

I feel as if I have been missing the mark. Don't ask me exactly what that means, I'm not sure myself. It's more of a feeling than anything. I'm still an amateur at this; I don't know what I'm doing half the time.

Have you ever been at a party and told what you thought was a funny joke, but it received no laughter, just uncomfortable stares? That's how I feel in the aftermath of about 50% of my posts. My attempts at humor seem to fall flat, as do my political posts. And I obviously broke some kind of unwritten rule earlier this year when I posted one of my own songs. No reaction but crickets. Being a musician, I can tell you that the absolute worst response to a creative endeavor is a non-response. I know the blog world works differently, but I haven't gotten used to that part yet.

During my break, I seriously considered shutting down Shoot The Moose altogether. Not in a hissy fit, taking my ball and going home kind of way, but in an admission that it had been a failed experiment. But I know I can't do that. I write. That's what I do, what I have done from a very early age. My preaching, songwriting, even my style of web programming, all of it springs from that creative writing spark that God put in my soul - it's who I am. Prose is what I do, and Shoot The Moose is, short of writing a book, the best outlet for my desire to write and write often.

Also, at the risk of giving myself a little too much importance, the composite of Nashville area blogs has a distinct lack of voices from southwest Davidson county. This is not to take anything away from Kerry, Lindsay, or Holiday Grinch, (or anyone else I've forgotten) but each of them has their own "thing", and I am the only person I know who is presumptuous enough to claim to be the "voice" of anyone, much less a part of town. So, I'll take that mantle till somebody kicks me off of it.

So my task in the coming year is to figure out what I do best, do that, and drop the rest. The shotgun approach isn't working anymore. I'll still post the Ugly Betty recap/reviews, because I enjoy writing them and almost nobody else does it. Daddyblogging seems to be my strong suit right now, so I'll continue doing that. Whenever I get the chance to write in the point of view of a southwest Nashvillian, I'll try to do that, just because I think SOMEBODY ought to. That means that evey now and then, I'll still write about politics, but hopefully from a previously unheard perspective. I'll continue to write theological posts also, because I love bouncing "deep thoughts" off of Kat.

Everything else is up for grabs. I may leave humor, sports, and overt politics to others, because they do it far better than I do. However, I could change my mind. Like I said, these are the initial impressions I've gotten from my soul-searching; it could turn out that I'm totally wrong.

But my mission in the coming year is to find a focus (or two or three) for this blog. Y'all will help me, right?