So did anybody ever figure out why the world is weird?

Happy blogaversary to me! Tell Me Why The World Is Weird is now 1 year old, and the #1 Christianity/feminism/China blog on the internet! (Actually, if you know of any other Christianity/feminism/China blogs- that is, blogs whose main topics are all 3 of those things- please tell me...)

My first post said this would be a blog where I ask questions and discuss why culture and the world are weird (and I mean "weird" in the best possible way here). I was hoping to have discussion in the comments section and I could learn things and discuss things. I had only recently decided I'm a feminist, and that I would be more honest and open-minded about questioning the bible and Christianity-related things, because I'm confident that Christianity is true and Jesus is Lord and the resurrection and all that. So yeah, I had lots of things to ask questions about.

So, that's kind of totally not where the blog ended up going. Instead, I discovered a ton of other bloggers writing about interesting stuff, and I learn things from them rather than trying to get people to make insightful discussion in my comments section. And it turns out I have a lot of opinions about things, so I ended up writing about those.

So anyway. Here is what I have to say about the blog over the past year, and where I hope it will go:

Matthew

I'm going through the gospel of Matthew at the rate of one post per week. Sometimes I feel like I'm totally not qualified to write about the bible, especially the parts I don't understand, but I also believe that you don't have to be the most educated scholar ever in order to get meaningful stuff from the bible. And I'm honest about the stuff that I seriously don't get. (And there's a possibility I could be wrong about everything. Consider that a disclaimer.)

They're not my most well-written posts ever, because I don't want to pull out one point from the passage and write a strong argument around it- I want to study the entire thing, regardless of whether it all fits into one main point. So sometimes I feel like I'm just meandering around the book of Matthew instead of saying anything meaningful. Such is life.

Anyway, the bible is great and I want more of it in my life, so I'm glad I'm writing about Matthew.

Feminism 101

So I started this series called Feminism 101, because sometimes I read feminist blogs and they're like "Some privileged cis guy was tone-policing my argument about how slut-shaming narratives reinforce rape culture and patriarchy and don't help to create safe spaces" and ... what?

Feminism is about loving and helping people, especially people who are different than you and may have needs and experiences that you totally didn't know about at all. And that's a pretty simple premise, but feminism comes with all this other language and I want to define those terms so people who may be totally unfamiliar with feminism (like me a few years ago) can understand it.

Unfortunately, so far this blog series only has 2 posts, which define the terms feminism and victim-blaming. But I will totally write more.

But what if I change my mind?

Like I said, a lot of my views have been changing- so what if I write something, and then a few months later I change my opinion on it? OH THE HORROR!

No, it's okay! It's okay to be wrong. We're all just trying to figure stuff out, and if I never blogged anything I might change my mind on... then I'd never blog anything, would I?

More guest posts!

Obligatory. Any time someone writes a post about what they want to change about their blog, they have to include "more guest posts." (There's like a law about it or something.) Current guest post opportunities can be found here.

Cute

I confess that I have not adequately delivered on the promised "hopefully some cute pictures of animals." Please accept my sincere apologies and check out Slacktivist's post with cute animals and this webcam of a beluga whale.

China

As I may have mentioned once or twice, I'm trying to move to China. Once I get there, expect more posts about Chinese language and culture. BECAUSE IT'S TOTALLY AWESOME! I just can't get over how fascinating the workings of my brain are when I'm not used to speaking English.

Variety

One of my goals is to participate in more link-ups and stuff, so I'm challenged to write on a topic that someone else chooses, a topic I wouldn't normally write about. And for the topics I do choose, I hope to have some more variety, because I'm unique and special and all that.

I had this big epiphany recently: I'm not Rachel Held Evans, and that's okay! (Her blog is totally awesome, by the way.) I'm going to write about what I want to write about, and I don't want to just stick to the usual topics that Christian feminist bloggers write on.

AND I totally want to write about Disney movies! I love Disney! And sciency nerdy stuff! And dinosaurs!

Image source.

So that's what I have to say about Tell Me Why The World Is Weird. Feel free to leave comments about what you liked or suggestions you have. And thanks for reading!