Year in Review (12-28-24)

The days roll by without relenting. I have known for as long as I can remember that you need to enjoy the present, savor your family, be happy where you are. "Be here now." 

I just have rarely done it. It's not my personality and, just maybe, not my circumstances. I've always been in a mad dash, it seems. I don't know what I would or could do differently. My kids are successfully launched. We've had some amazing experiences as a family.

I lost my mother this year at 98. She had a wonderful life and a good death. I celebrated her life here on the blog. Still hope to publish a biography of my parents.

I'm in Erik Erickson's "Generativity vs. Stagnation." I suppose by external appearances, these years have been generative. I helped start a seminary. I've written over thirty peer-reviewed books and self-published as many. I had some great years of teaching and some great years in higher ed leadership at Indiana Wesleyan and Houghton. My years with Campus have brought extraordinary learning and continue to be very productive and exciting.

We can't choose when we leave this earth. I'd love to leave Notes Along the Way and Philosophical Pensees behind if I ever finish them. Whether anyone would ever read them is another thing.

2. The most successful book I wrote this year was A Biblical Argument for Women in Ministry, published in June. This clearly is scratching an itch as I've sold around 600 copies in a half year and continue to sell over a copy a day on average. It has a high-performing Facebook ad that was born of a viral set of tweets.

I've not been able to reproduce the success, although I have made several other attempts. My wife wants me to stop churning these out and write a more conventional book with a real publisher this year. I do have a contract for one with Cascade and will probably seek a contract for a book on Science and Scripture.

Late last year and early this, I took a course in self-publishing that was very informative. I haven't been able to fully reproduce the results, but I have learned a great deal. I continue to experiment with AI both for book covers and editing suggestions. 

Here are the books I churned out this year in the quest for a winning formula. The premise of all of them is solid. Admittedly, I didn't push the marketing too hard since there wasn't initial success. I also didn't fully follow the method I learned in the course.

• The Spiritual War for the World (February)
• Explanatory Notes on Mark's Passion Week (March)
• The Sun Will Grow Dark, the Moon Turn to Blood (April)
• Biblical Hebrew for the Novice (July)
• Thirty Days of Jesus' Birth (November)
• The Mystery of Jesus (December)

3. I continue to put Greek and Hebrew videos on YouTube. They have dedicated viewers. I still have some Patreon followers. It is a place to see video material that is both listed and sometimes unlisted. I started a philosophy series on Tik Tok, but I probably need to think more about how to approach it. 

4. In my work with Campus Edu, I feel like a super-dean. Instead of administrating one faculty and curriculum, I work with about ten colleges and coordinate curriculum and faculty with them. It is very interesting with lots of karma and punishment for my past sins as a profligate faculty. This next year suggests more adventures with courses of many kinds and more dabbling with AI.

I have so much intellectual property (for example, this blog has been going since 2004), that it would be interesting to create an "Ask Ken" AI interface. I don't think it would be too hard as I could already create a custom GPT of this kind. But I don't necessarily want to give Sam Altman all my stuff. With tools like HeyGen, I could even have an avatar of me give video responses. Not worth the investment without a clear market. Pondering and continuing to learn.

5. The election was quite a thing. We'll see how it plays out.

I'll leave it at that. A dream for this coming year is the ever-elusive peace in the moment.