After two months of writing this blog, I am happy to report that all of my hopes and desires for this blog have been met and exceeded. 

At the beginning, I published the articles “Intentional processing. . . what will this blog be like?” and “Maniacal self-absorption, loneliness, or somewhere in between? Why blog…”.  These posts spelled out my goals for this blog.

To try something new and see how it goes, I am going to use these summer months to write 2-3 series of articles.  These two series will consist of weekly, interrelated posts.  I think they will be published at the beginning of each week on either Sunday night or Monday.  Each series will be 5-7 weeks long.

The first series was begun on Monday.  Please see the first post by clicking here.  As you see, this series will be on my observations of weddings.  I have been to 1,294,985 of them.  If you would like an overview of this series, please click here.

The second series will begin the first or second week of July.  It will be a series in which I write about my first impressions of life in this country in Asia.  I will send out a post in a few weeks with an overview of what this series will look like. [Read more…]

This is the final post, of three, which is introducing this blog.

You can look up at the top menu of this page to understand more about the topics I will be focusing the posts upon.  Embedded in the top menu pages will be helpful books, resources, and other things I like and would suggest to people.  Now onto more of the style and manner in which I will approach this. . . what will this blog be like?

Painting in broad strokes, it is my hope to structure this blog in the following ways.

Chronicling – Journaling has been a large part of my personal pilgrimage through life.  From my junior year in college until last year, I had filled up 46 journals.  I have found that simply putting my thoughts, prayers, struggles, dreams, and aspirations on paper enriches life and keeps me going in a thoughtful, intentional direction.  One of my few regrets from my 10 years of living overseas is that I have not done a good job of writing about everyday life type stuff.  I have been admonished to do this many times, by many people, but this has fallen upon deaf ears.  With this blog, I will be getting back to some of my basics of journaling, but do more chronicling of everyday life in East Asia.

Processing – I learn best by processing life lessons from the past, grappling daily with the challenges and joys of everyday life, and look to the future in light of how the past and present [Read more…]

Now that I have your attention. . .

I have resisted blogging in the past for several reasons.  For one, it seemed arrogant.  Do I really think that I am so important that people want to hear my thoughts?  Blogging, I reasoned, is an act of self-absorption. 

On the other hand, I reasoned, blogging seemed fit for those that are just really lonely.  While I do live overseas and have spent my fair share of nights walking the streets of Asia alone or reading on back decks of towering mega-city apartments with nothing but a book and my iPod, I have never envisioned myself as the lonely type.

Then things began to change.  I began to read blogs.  Blogs of friends.  Blogs of experts.  Blogs of gurus.  Blogs of problem solvers of all types.  I began to love these blogs and gained greatly from them, both in knowledge and in enjoyment. 

It is in this vein that I have landed at this blog.  I guess I am self-absorbed enough to hope that someone can gain some level of enjoyment and/or benefit from reading about my life, experiences, successes, and failures.  My life has been made richer and fuller by many others that have shared their lives, experiences, and knowledge in avenues such as blogs.  It is my honest prayer that this site will likewise be a blessing to others. 

I am lonely enough to hope that this blog is a way of connecting with friends, family, and maybe even some that I don’t yet know personally in a meaningful way.  Turning 40 recently, being single, living FAR away from ALL of my family and [Read more…]

It is always said that the most difficult part of writing a book is penning the first sentence.  It is with this in mind that I write this first post.  I move into this surprisingly nervous.  Seems like a strange thing to make me nervous, but still I am.  So here we go. . .

After months of thinking about, researching, creating, meticulously over-analyzing (as I am prone to do in all of life), and working with a very gifted web designer, I am finally beginning this blog.

With the beginning of this site (johngunter.com), I find myself in the midst of several of “beginnings” in my personal life.  I just moved to a new city here in East Asia.  I have recently begun a new assignment professionally/vocationally.  I have just turned 40.  These all feel like beginnings to me.

Even in looking at the span of a year, spring always feels like a beginning.  As a kid, spring signified the beginning of baseball season (which much of my life revolved around).  The new [Read more…]