Pardon me, my hypocrisy is showing.

Let me explain.

I enjoy reading a variety of Christian blogs on a daily basis. However, I limit myself to five or so of my favorite sites due to time constraints. I’m also concerned of digesting too much varied information in a short span. This often leads me to remember absolutely nothing about what I read that day.

What wasted labor!

I am often turned away by posts that are too long. I just don’t have time to work my way through them. My mindset while browsing my favorite blogs is to read quickly and move on to the next post.

My philosophy is, if I’m going to do any substantial reading, I will read books on topics of interest or articles on the Internet by well established, renowned authors, praised as great teachers and writers in their field of expertise.

Now you can plainly see my hypocrisy. Yes, I have come to realize my posts are often bloated beyond the point of bursting. I have a vision of my readers cringing as they read my posts, expecting at any moment to hear a loud pop followed by a multitude of scrambled letters raining down on their desktops.

I am humbled that anyone who regularly reads this blog has stuck with it through some of my 2,000 word plus marathons. A common recommendation that blog sages give for post length ranges from around 250-600 words max.

OOOPSY!

After checking my archives, save the ‘Great Quotes’ and ‘Post of the Week’ categories, my average post size weighs in at a whopping 1,361 words.

That’s a lot of excess verbiage, my friends.

I have 5 posts with 1,800 words or more. My longest post had 2,187 words. And that’s after I had edited out a couple of sections!

My fingers are outta control! Once they begin dancing across the keyboard they just don’t quit! It’s like their performing ballet to “The Song that never Ends.”

Well, by the grace of God I’m a merciful and compassionate fellow. I will torment you no longer. I have decreed a crash word diet. My posts will no longer meander on and on and on and on… Oh, sorry! There I go again. (Sigh) This is going to be hard to overcome! I have a dictionary addiction and an enlarged thesaurus gland. I need help!

My posts from now on will be short and succinct, concise and lucid. Easier said than done, I’m sure. (especially the lucid part) My goal is to max each post out at between 600-800 words. I think that’s attainable. Hehe. I can always turn a post into a 8 part ‘series’ if necessity dictates. Ok, I know that’s a loophole and I will endeavor to not use it as a crutch.

My philosophy with theological matters will be to give brief overviews and link readers to resources that can provide deeper, and much more insightful views into those subjects. My readers will benefit much more from minds that are far greater in stature than my own. I suppose my objective is to simply pique interest in doctrine, theology, Christology and ultimately the glory of God. In other words, I hope to bore you no longer.

Welcome to the new, leaner, slim-lined version of A Peculiar Pilgrim. I hope you will enjoy.

Note: I’m off to a pretty good start. This post is just over 500 words.

Yes! I can do it!

Like with the Weight Watchers program, I am carefully tracking numbers. I’m losing weight in pounds and in verbiage. I feel better already.