Blogging or Tinkering?

It seems as though the last little while I've spent a lot more time tinkering with this blog than actually blogging. The tinkering is good, in at least a couple senses: it makes the blog appearance and behaviour better for both me and you (at least I think so), and I've learned a lot through the tinkering and I love learning. It just seems to take ever so much longer than I think it will.

So somehow things don't quite feel right. I didn't really start blogging in order to learn html, css, javascript, etc. I started because I felt the need to create a place where all those internal reflections about God and God's direction and my responses could be recorded -- for my own benefit in looking back over the way God has dealt with me -- and shared for the benefit of the larger church, or at least those who might take an interest in these rambling thoughts.

The tinkering started off because I needed to allow for longer posts to be handled in a way that didn't clutter up the main page, yet gave those posts as much space as possible on the post page, so they could be read more easily. That took me into places I didn't at first think I'd ever want to go.

Then I spotted someone who had a "subscribe by email" feature and remembered being asked by a reader if that was possible. I tried that service to subscribe to a few blogs and it looked promising. But it failed miserably on my own blog. That led me deeper into the realm of feeds and feed management. After trying out another email subscription service, I discovered feedblitz as a newly promoted feature through feedburner. It's a great service, but that's another post.

Now that the email subscription service is implemented, maybe I can quit tinkering and get back to blogging. Just as soon as I undo those test email subscriptions I no longer need, and clean up that footer on the individual post page. Surely figuring out how to control the placement of images shouldn'take that long, should it? Ahhh well, will life ever work out quite the way we plan??