2025 Day 300: Key Blog Changes

6:00 AM Monday.

Here is my plan for 2025 Day 300. Prayer from 4:15 AM to 6 AM. Blog Work (with Breakfast) from 6 AM to 11 AM. Lunch, Nap, Bring Mom to Eye Surgeon, and Strength Training from 11 AM to 5 PM. Supper and Personal Hygiene from 5 PM to 6 PM. Kindle Reading in Crusade and Jihad: The Thousand-Year War between the Muslim World and the Global North by William R. Polk from 6 PM to 8 PM. Sleep from 8 PM until 5 AM Tomorrow.

And here is a summary of key blog changes I have made over the past few days.

A. Mission

I've changed the title of this blog to "Discerning an Abrahamic Eremitic Blogging Vocation with a Psychiatric Disability." I still believe in the saving power and transformational global significance of Jesus's ministry, but I am no longer discerning a specifically Christian denominational identity. I believe it is more accurate to say that I am now discerning an Abrahamic eremitic blogging vocation that is informed by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam without internal or external religious discrimination. Of course, given my secular diagnosis with bipolar schizoaffective disorder, it remains somewhat challenging for me at times to distinguish between my veridical Abrahamic baby and my grandiose or paranoid Abrahamic bathwater. Happily, my clinical team is reporting good symptom control.

B. Vision

I've changed the description of this blog to "Published Daily at Optimum Flow, Weekly at Low Flow, and Less Than Weekly When I Am Troubleshooting or on Retreat. Thanks for Your Visit. God Bless." 

My vocational vision is to publish daily. Realistically, because of intersecting life, spiritual, and clinical issues, I may publish less than daily, or even just once a week. If I publish less than once week, it means I am troubleshooting a key issue or that I am on a pre-planned retreat of some kind.

C. Profile

I've recently added quite a bit of written data to my profile. Eventually I'd like to upload an audio introduction.

D. Time Management

I've made some updates to my Time Management page. More importantly, I've let go of my "Weekly Planning" project and shifted to a new project called "Blog-Based Life Planning." This will allow me the flexibility to post daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual plans as it seems appropriate.

Another time management change that I implemented over the weekend is a 6 PM to 6 AM device-free rule. Importantly, I don't count my 2014 Kindle Paperwhite as a device. The idea is to get into my pajamas from 6 PM to 6 AM and spend this time exclusively in my religious reading, sleeping, and meditation area. A related office management rule that I set into motion on Friday afternoon is to keep my smartphone completely out of my religious reading, sleeping, and meditation area at all times. We will see how long these two rules last and what I learn from them.

E. Family Support

I've changed my planned "Future Generations" project to "Thoughts on Celibacy" because all of my blog posts are letters to future generations and because my call to celibacy needs explicit attention under my Family Support role.

F. Spiritual Direction

As you might expect, I've made some major changes to my Spiritual Direction page. In place of a Thich Nhat Hanh photo at the top, I've switched to a photo of Hans Küng. Nhat Hanh, the venerable Vietnamese Zen master, is still a very significant influence on my spiritual formation, but I ordered Küng's Islam: Past, Present and Future on Friday and expect to be following this controversial Catholic theologian's lead over the course of the next year as I take a deep dive into Islam.

I've also replaced my "Sunday Morning Worship" project and my "Inquiry and Catechumenate" project with a new project titled "Religious Writing." This is a substantial life-course modification. While it would be premature for me to say that I have ended my discernment of a specifically Catholic vocation, I am letting go for now of any explicit goal to become a Catholic catechumen, and with it any concrete sense of a Sunday morning worship obligation.

G. Political Theology

After learning more about the trajectory of mainstream Christian Zionism, I have decided it will be clearer if I substitute "Two-State Zionism" for "Christian Zionism" as I move forward in political theology.

H. Music of the Spheres

I've changed my "Christian Astrology" project to "Abrahamic Astrology," and I've changed my "Christian Earth Science" project to "Abrahamic Earth Science."

***

That's an overview of all that I have done here on the blog over the last few days. I expect it will take a while - perhaps the rest of Q4 2025 - for these high-level modifications to be realized in a meaningful way on the ground across each of my 28 projects.

End 10:02 AM.