The Mormon House Hubby
My favorite hymn is number 217 “Come Let Us Anew.” And I recently had the opportunity to sing it, since it’s often used as a New Years’ song. The song compares life to an arrow that refuses to stop moving.
One of the worst habits I had as a young writer was wanting to write a masterpiece. The problem with this approach is that nothing is good enough. Everything is preparation, nothing is execution. So you wait preparing until everything is right before finally pursuing the project.
Of course, everything is never completely right, and so you end up waiting and waiting, and accomplishing nothing.
John Milton had a similar goal. As a young man, he decided that he wanted to write an epic poem, a book length verse that followed a set story model. In 17th century England the epic poem stood as the premier art form.
Yet Milton didn’t write the first word of his magnum opus until he was 51 years old. But Milton wasn’t sitting around waiting. As a student he began with the relatively simple pastoral poems, as he grew he moved into drama, and criticism. Each work in Milton’s bibliography grew and built on each other. Until as the pinnacle of his career he reached his long worked for goal.
Life is full of iterations, and improvements. Stops and starts. We can’t simply expect the arrow to wait for us to be ready, or it will be long since passed.
So it is with Christopher’s Corner. When I began writing spiritual thoughts for the More Good Foundation they were hosted on a side blog, where I was the only writer. When we launched LDS.net last April, I wanted to yell, wait hold on, my blog hasn’t been perfected yet, let me figure out the perfect angle and audience, and then we can launch in a blaze of glory!
But alas, the launch wouldn’t wait for me to come up with the perfect branding strategy. So I’ve been writing under the banner of “Christopher’s Corner,” a perfectly pleasant appellation that did nothing to identify the blog’s purpose or audience. Not to mention a brand already used half a dozen times around the internet.
So today we launch a new title, logo, and brand “The Mormon House Hubby.” The title conveniently works with my long time Twitter handle (@ldshousehubby), and plays off the idea of the Mormon house wife.
The content of the blog shouldn’t change much, though I hope to find more opportunities to discuss my family and the way they impact my life. And I hope to provide more interesting and regular updates.
And if this experience is anything like the others, I will discover in years to come, that it’s time to upgrade and do better once again. But there’s no time to worry about that now. I need start blogging–anew!