Ten years ago today, my first child — only six days old — was sleeping soundly, as was my wife. I was exhausted too, but in the stupor of exhaustion, I decided to start a blog. My baby girl inspired my first blog post: “Six days into fatherhood, my baby teaches me a lesson about marriage.” And in the days, months, and years that followed, I continued sharing stories about discovering God in everyday life. Now, after 575 blog posts, essays, and/or online articles (plus a book!), I’m still writing.  

Most people haven’t had the opportunity to work with the book publishing industry and they don’t know how it works. I’m going to let you in on a secret: There’s a really, really important rule that all first-time authors have to live by (if they want to write another book).

It’s nice to look back on 2016 and see what was interesting to the people who read my blog. Even after writing the blog for seven years, I can never guess what people are going to like.

I had no idea what I was signing up for when I began blogging.  I thought you just sat down, wrote several amazing posts, and then six months and ten thousand followers later, you began negotiating a book deal.  Right.

On Jan. 8, 2010, I sat down and wrote my first post over at my personal blog, wondering if it might go viral. It did not, but I was undeterred. I figured it would just take some time — you know, six months or so — before the world recognized my talent. I would become a blogging rock star and be on my way to a book deal. Or not.

Five years ago today, I published my first blog post on a rinky-dink website I called Spiritual Klutz.  That post was a little essay called “Fatherhood Hits Me Upside the Head,” which I managed to write in spite of the grogginess and exhaustion of being a new dad. In the 1,825 days that have passed since then, I’ve posted hundreds of blog posts, Facebook status updates on my page, and a few tweets; and I’ve learned some valuable lessons in the process.  Here are five of them that I’m happy to share with my fellow bloggers: