Regular visitors to this blog will see the new format. I like it . . . but I hope to play around with it more and add more graphics.

Some little add-ons I had on the old blog were lost when I chose this new template (you didn't think I did this on my own, did you?). I lost the old add-on comments, so those gems that some of you wrote are gone. I didn't know that was going to happen! Honestly, I didn't! It wasn't that I couldn't stand the competition . . . that your comments might be more insightful than my blogging! Really! Anyway, I like the new comments format better.

I also lost the stats generator. Maybe you never noticed it, but there was a link called Go Stats or something like that down at the bottom of the page. You know what I could do . . . and what I did do all the time . . . was to click on it and find out how many "hits" my blog was receiving, what days people were visiting my blog, where I ranked among the "Culture and Relationships" blogs on Blogger (somewhere usually around 270) and a bunch of other stats. When I visited my blog to see if there were any comments, there was that little tyrannical stats generator tempting me to check the usefulness of my blogging existence. The little beast became an ego-meter. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit . . . my existential angst wasn't that tied to the stats add-on . . . maybe the stats record is simply a good proxy for a bigger temptation.

Anyway, I've chosen not to have a statistical record anymore. What does it matter? Modernity lies deeply ingrained in my being and its penchant for measuring everything by numbers is a habit I don't want to foster. It's an addiction I've been fighting since going to Africa. I don't freakin' care anymore . . . well, honestly I do. I want to know how many people are visiting my blog. I want to be validated! I want to know someone is reading this! But I don't want to want to anymore.

The way I'm going to try and kill that little modern monster is to deprive it of nourishment. It's been on a bread and water diet for years, but still managing to stay alive. To break myself of a lingering numbers fetish I'll get rid of little counters like that one. But, of course, you know what the second question is after "So, where do you go to church?" - "How many members do you have?". And if someone already knows the answer to the first question, then question number two moves up to number one . . . even if they asked me that three months ago. If it is about numbers, why are we still worshipping one God?