In the last few weeks I’ve seen a substantial increase in traffic and RSS feed subscriptions. To all my new readers, welcome! I’m sure most of you have come from the Living After Faith and Chariots of Iron podcasts. For the rest of you, I recommend that you check them out if you haven’t already.

I follow site traffic closely, including Google searches that bring people to the site. The most popular (aside from people directly searching for the blog) are people looking for ex-Adventists and presumably teens that are looking for advise on how to tell their parents they’re atheists or afraid that their parent’s might find out that they are atheists or gay. These are by far the most touching. For the gay teens who find this blog, I’m sorry, but I can’t be all that much help. While I can try to imagine the situation you’re in, I can’t really understand it. Check out the It Gets Better project if you haven’t done so already.

If you’re afraid your parents might get suspicious based on what they find in your browser history, use Google Chrome or Chromium and open an “incognito” window. Here’s what Chromium says about incognito:

You’ve gone incognito. Pages you view in this window won’t appear in your browser history or search history, and they won’t leave other traces, like cookies, on your computer after you close the incognito window. Any files you download or bookmarks you create will be preserved, however. 
Going incognito doesn’t affect the behavior of other people, servers, or software. Be wary of:

• Websites that collect or share information about you

• Internet service providers or employers that track the pages you visit

• Malicious software that tracks your keystrokes in exchange for free smileys

• Surveillance by secret agents

• People standing behind you

Learn more about incognito browsing.Because Chromium does not control how extensions handle your personal data, all extensions have been disabled for incognito windows. You can reenable them individually in the extensions manager.

If you like the blog, feel free to share it. Tell your friends. If you find a post especially inspiring/informative/entertaining/etc, go ahead and use the links on the bottom to share it by email, Twitter, or Facebook. If you like it, odds are that one of your friends will like it too. I’m not doing this for the money (yes, I do have advertising on the site, but at the current rate I won’t get paid for a few more years and it will barely cover the costs of the annual domain registration and maybe a book or two), but more readers is always good.

Comment, dammit! I know I don’t have all the answers, odds are that with just a few comments there will be enough added details, perspectives, and clarifications that these posts could serve as useful resources for posterity. Comments also make it feel a little less like I’m talking to myself.

Last but not least, I have mentioned that I plan on writing a book at some point. Heck, I already have an idea for the second book, but I need to start on the first one first obviously. I even have an in with a publisher, I just need to take advantage of it. Just with material on the blog I have a pretty good start. Hopefully in the next month or so I’ll compile the relevant posts and see how much I actually have, then it should be pretty easy to start reworking the material, turning it into a more complete telling of the story.