If you're reading this post, you're probably thinking, "well it's about time that yokle put up a new blog post!" In fact, I'm thinking that myself, about myself. To the three of you who
But here's the deal: the future of this blog is still up in the air, undecided, less than certain. The fact is, most of my goals or motivations for keeping up the blog have been accomplished.
When I started, my goals were to explore my ability as a "writer" and find my own voice in writing. These I have done. I have found my voice (as all writers must do), bland as it may be, and I have even surprised myself a few occasions concerning my literary ability.
Also, starting it up, I thought I had something in me the world needed to hear. If you go back to the early posts you'll notice a few of these types of "prescriptive" or opinionated or even sermon-like posts. But this desire in me - to boss people around - has subsided as I've learned more about myself. I have found, instead, I am a listener, not a bosser.
As I entered the world of chaplancy, the goals for my blog changed. It became a mechanism through which I processed all of the new experiences and things I was learning, seeing and coping with. Being thrust from a happy-go-lucky existence into the world of trauma hospitals comes with a certain amount of shock. Sharing stories and thoughts on my blog helped me to sort it all out. When I learned something new, there was an energy that would sit inside me, waiting to get out and onto the blog. There's a large way in which blogging on those topics was very healing. Let's call it "blog therapy."
During my second residency as a chaplain (in AK), much less of what I was seeing and experiencing was new. I had already processed my thoughts for the most part. Thus, there are far less posts on that residency, even though my experiences of death, trauma, tears and heartache were no fewer.
As we moved to AK, I posted a wonderful daily trip update of where we were and what we had seen. This was so much fun that I later had those posts turned into a little book for Heather and I to keep. That process however, set a precedent for trip and travel updates, which I had not intended. These posts I have kept up fairly well until this summer. There are so many pictures and stories and places we've seen, and family whose visited, it just became too large a job to keep up the trip updates. It has become more of a burden than anything. They're not something that I want, from within me, to share on my blog. Yes, I want family to be able to read them; however, they're not the sort of things that jumps out of my fingers, onto the keyboard on into the screen. There's no energy inside me that just can't wait to post a trip update. Trip updates are not theraputic blogging.
I also like reviewing books on the blog. I've written about my motivation on this topic in another post. I won't rehash it here. But, I will still blog on books (I hope) about which I feel I have something worthwhile to say.
What, then, shall I blog about? At this point I'm not sure. I guess you could say, I'm in search of new blogging motivation. I've thought often about blogging more on hospice and hospice issues that arise. But there's no great energy behind it. Secondly, I find I have much less time for blogging these days too. That needs changing. So, bear with me, as I search for new topics and motivations. Pray that I find a subject(s) for which the words can't wait to leave my fingers.
Yours (both of you),
Nathan
