The Christian Rationalist

Category Archives: Meta

My Goal for 2019: Focus on Quality over Quantity

1 Comment Posted by Sam Elder on January 11, 2019

I started my 2019 blog reboot last week with retrospective reflections on my life in 2018, and as is common this time of year, I’d like to follow it up with my goals for 2019. In compiling this list, however, I found a unifying thread between the goals: In every case, I hope to replace a mindset focused on maximizing quantity with one focused on maintaining quality.

2018: A Year of Small Transitions

1 Comment Posted by Sam Elder on January 4, 2019

It’s been a while! I last posted a blog post in February 2018, and I’ve more or less gone silent on social media in that time as well. As I’ll explain shortly, it’s been a bit of an uncertain and transitional period in my life, but I think that has settled down now. As one of my New Years’ Resolutions, I’m expecting to blog on a weekly basis once again, and given the circumstances, I figured that a good first post would be a simple update on my life.

Here’s the short version, if you don’t want to read all of my personal details: I left my church of five years to join a church plant / merger in March, defended my PhD thesis in August, and got a job, through a seven-week Insight Data Science fellowship, at a small startup named Kebotix in November.

How I Blog

Leave a comment Posted by Sam Elder on November 3, 2017

This blog has had its bursts and lulls, but I’ve finally gotten into a bit of a rhythm — this is now my 42nd straight week publishing a blog post on Friday! I thought it might be helpful to share some thoughts on how I’ve been able to keep that up, and give some insights into how I approach blogging. I’m by no means an expert, but I know some of you would like to get into blogging more regularly, and perhaps what I can share from my process might help you, too.

Welcome to thechristianrationalist.com!

Leave a comment Posted by Sam Elder on July 1, 2015

This is the new website for my blog! When I started blogging over on Blogspot, I wasn’t sure how long I’d be able to keep it up, so I was happy to use the simplest blogging interface available. Having written posts almost weekly for four and a half months now, my blog has started to pick up speed. At the encouragement of Grace and the rest of the internet, I’ve moved my blog over to this new domain via WordPress.com, which will be the permanent location of the blog.

So check out my new About page for some of my background motivation for starting this blog, and my new Best page for some of the highlights from the content that I’ve written so far. Update posts like this one will show up under the Meta category. I plan to continue posting approximately weekly for the foreseeable future, so follow, like, and comment away!

Posts 1-10 Summaries and Updates

Leave a comment Posted by Sam Elder on May 5, 2015

Since restarting my blog 76 days ago, I’ve written 10 new blog posts, one per week except for Spring Break. At this point, I’d like to take a short moment to provide some updates on those posts.

I also realize that my writing style is definitely rather long-winded, and you might not feel you have time to read everything in full detail. So I’m also taking this opportunity to write down paragraph-long summaries of each of my posts. If the paragraph intrigues you, read the full thing!
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