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A Long-View of Blogging

Early last week I was invited by my former professor (and current friend!) Aleen Ratzlaff to present about blogging for one of her communication classes at Tabor College. I was excited to be asked, but was honest when I said, “I’ll do it if you think I have something to offer.” Aleen’s reply: “Yes, you do!” 

That small sentence was the start of a gift that I’m blown away by even after the presentation. 

In a way, writing has felt more like a thorn than a passion in the last year or so. I find not only that the writing process whittles away at what little energy store I have, but that even when I write words, I’m not very keen to share them. I’ve wondered more than once if my brain is working to protect me from an action I’ve found extremely painful of late…and also it’s crossed my mind that perhaps this block is a God-given way to protect me from myself. Or maybe I’m just…done. Whatever the root, the inability – and lack of desire – to write has felt scary to someone who’s always been a writer in one shape or another. These things and more weighed on me as I said yes to Aleen. Do I really have something to offer? 

This presentation made me look back over the history of my blog with a different view. With this fresh perspective I started wondering…maybe the key is paying attention to the long-view of my blog? Maybe I’ve treated it too much in isolation, taking a small-view look at immediate statistics on individual posts and coming away disappointed? Reframing in this way makes me see blogging as very different from the one-and-done nature of social media, but I’ve often treated the outlets with the same expectation. It was neat to look back over the all-time history of my blog as each individual post combined into something bigger – and I realized even though I haven’t published a true blog post in over a year, my blog continues to get hits. 

That shocked me. 

Social media algorithms aren’t like that. Even a successful micro-blog post on Facebook doesn’t have longevity. Without paying for boosts or ads, a good post lasts hours to *maybe* the next day. The immediate reaction is nice, but it’s not always sustainable. Perhaps blogging is more of an important concept than I knew? A frequent prayer of mine is somehow – in the middle of all the noise about all the things – that God will give me eyes and ears to see and hear the truth. This opportunity feels like a direct answer to that prayer and I have a lot to chew on.


Comments

  1. I've been wondering about this, too. When I have to write sermons every week, and they take SO much thought, I often feel like I just don't have it in me to write one more thing. Some kind of (usually crappy) audio posts to my blog(s), though. Now I'm wondering if, rather than a super quick summary of the sermon I can write a mini-version of the sermon itself as a blogpost to accompany the audio. Might be a creative solution to my context, I dunno. I look forward to seeing what you discover...

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    1. That's a good idea! I was starting to feel like that trying to write my newspaper column, keep up with my blog, write solid social media micro blogs AND my book. It's just a lot of creative energy and emotional energy and in this season, I don't really have extra of emotional energy to give!

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