WordPress, the service I am using for this blog, has challenged it’s users to write at least one post a day or one post a week during 2011 and I have been mulling over that for the last 24 hours, debating whether I should take up the daily challenge.

I’ve decided to take up an expanded version of the once a week challenge and challenge myself to write something for this blog three or four times a week.  I have been neglectful of this blog over the last few months and missed out on a couple of good opportunities and themes.  I want this to be more consistent and this time next year, I want to look back and be proud of a full years worth of posts.

The reasons I want to do this is complicated, but at the core are two things.  The first is that I want to be a writer and not just a person who writes something on rare occasions and decides to call himself a writer because it sounds cool.   It’s what I want to do for a career.  It was what I wanted to do in high school.  It is what I sort of did in college.  It was my identity, but now it feels like lost opportunity and time.  Now I am rusty with my writing and in desperate need to develop good writing habits.  As WordPress put it in the opening line of their challenge, “to write more, write more.”  I have other goals around writing this year outside of this blog that I hope to also tackle, but this is where I begin.

The second reason is really two reasons in itself…Benjamin and Matthew.  I firmly believe that even if they were 35, they wouldn’t understand what a “Intranet Community Liaison” is, because I have very little idea what it is.  However, they love books…they understand books and I want them to understand me.  I don’t really hang my heart out on my sleeve and I often struggle to speak my thoughts and feelings.  However, give me a computer or a pen and paper, and I can express who I am and what I feel.  I think Benjamin and Matthew deserve to know what goes on in their daddy’s head, when they are old enough.

Not to mention that this blog is about them and for them and the growing relationship between them, Andrea and I.  They bring me such joy in my life that sharing that with them, through this blog (and time, of course) is the least I can do before the memories fade away.

So, that is what I am challenging myself…three or four short posts a week and one longer one.  And I hope all of you enjoy it.