8 Years Later and I Still Fear Blogging

Blogging has taken a backseat in the world of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. It is not that people do not read it is just that blogging is difficult to get any traction in such a noisy internet. For over eight years I have been plodding away on this blog and I have learned a few things.

• Blogger is for PC people, Wordpress is for Apple people and Squarespace is greatness
• Mailchimp is also greatness
• I might be able to build a larger audience if I used Adwords and/or better posts
• Shorter posts are read and shared more than longer ones
• People love lists
• Post titles matter a lot
• Images help
• Building an email list is very helpful to see what is "connecting"
• Post to Facebook and Twitter

Beyond the blogging specific stuff I have learned more about myself than I ever imaged. Perhaps the most important point of self discovery is how much I fear blogging. Specifically how much I fear putting thoughts on "paper" in a public way. I am not a great speller. I am not disciplined in writing and distracted often contributing to mistakes. I did not pick up the basic principles of sentence structure and am not sure what a preposition is. These errors are brought to my attention by someone with some consistency and no matter how much I try to be better I seem to plateau on ability. Each published post is laden with fear and trepidation that I often cloister up for weeks on end and don't write anything (that has happened more this year than any year so far). 

Eight years later and I still fear blogging because of how it exposes so many of my insecurities and inadequacies. Blogging is a practice in humility and a practice that is most formative to me than other areas of my life (except parenting which is just a series of failed attempts to live into the very ideals that I want my children to live into). 

I write this all to say that if you fear something about yourself and you want to "get over it" I am not sure that is the point. I believe the point of the fears in our lives is not to run from them or to "get over them" but to learn from them. Fears are some of the greatest gifts we can receive because they teach us more than we could ever imagine. If it is possible to embrace that which you fear, I would encourage you to do so. You may still fear it, but it will teach you something you need to know.

Thank you

For the past seven years I have been keeping this little blog. Over the years there  have been a number of highlights from reaching my first 100 subscribers, being tweeted by Nadia Bolz-Weber, curating the first "Be The Change" ebook, launching Imprints, getting email feedback, being reminded weekly of my poor grammar and experiencing internet trolls.

The best thing about this blog that I have experienced is when someone says, "I was reading on your blog..." Many times I don't know what they are talking about because I forget what is posted each time, but I am always humbled when I hear that. 

Thank you for reading this entry and for encouraging me these past seven years. It is my prayer that I will continue to be provoked by God to always be the Change. 

Six

Nine months before graduating from Brite Divinity School and a few years before ordination, this little blog began. What began as a series of random thoughts with an audience size of one a month now is a series of random thoughts with an audience size of about 700 a month. 

You readers are the largest congregation that I will ever have the privilege of engaging on a regular basis. Thank you for subscribing, reading, commenting and sharing with others. 

If this blog were a person, this is what the development would be. Which other than the math portion, this is just about right.

With this milestone, I will be taking a week sabbath from writing. 

If you are reading this you are ahead of the internet

The internet is beginning to give some traction to the micro-giving that the internet used to deem impossible (Listen to or read this report). So if you are reading this blog, then you are ahead of the internet because a few months ago, this blog has been accepted as a content creator for the "CentUp" micro-giving project.

So you see, when you create a CentUp account, you not only get 100 free cents to share, but you also are ahead of the internet. You will be a trendsetter. You will be saying "no" to an ad based internet. You will, in a small way, be the change nudging the world into a more generous culture.

Are you willing to create an account with just $2 just to try it out?