How to Get Back Into Your Blogging Groove

In the past cou­ple of weeks, I have not been in my blog­ging groove and unable to muster much enthu­si­asm. As part of the process of fig­ur­ing out why, I did a lot of read­ing and, in the process, dis­cov­ered quite a few blogs that I had never vis­ited before.

One of them was Susan Suarez: Online Jour­nal to Cre­at­ing a Suc­cess­ful Site. Her post, Re-energize Your Blog­ging Spirit, res­onated with me from the first sen­tence: “Many blog­gers expe­ri­ence time-to-time some dis­cour­age­ment that may make them want to stop blog­ging.” She offers four tech­niques for get­ting re-energized and inspired to con­tinue blog­ging pur­pose­fully. They are:

1. Remem­ber Your Blog’s Purpose
2. Net­work
3. Take A Break!
4. Do Some­thing Different

For me, the prob­lem has noth­ing to do with my stated pur­poses and goals. My vision for “On the Hori­zon” remains consistent.

I did take a short break the past few days, as she sug­gests, and that has been help­ful. Of course, I did not walk away from the com­puter entirely. I have been exper­i­ment­ing with dif­fer­ent themes and color schemes. I really love the Cut­line theme I have employed the past few months, but am less enam­ored with Cut­line 2.0, the upgrade released recently.

So the sec­ond and fourth items on Susan’s list are the ones that really intrigue me and are the areas I have been explor­ing more intently.

Net­work

The blog­ging com­mu­nity is amaz­ing. I have become acquainted with some phe­nom­e­nal writ­ers, many of whom are per­sons of faith who care deeply about and reach out to other blog­gers in friend­ship and prayer­ful support.

I need to spend more time inten­tion­ally focused on net­work­ing with other blog­gers — I’m con­fi­dent that we all feel we could do more in this area, but there are always con­straints upon our time. Vis­it­ing and com­ment­ing upon each oth­ers’ writ­ing is an enor­mously impor­tant ele­ment of fos­ter­ing cama­raderie and connection.

This is one aspect of blog­ging that has trou­bled me for awhile, frankly, and one area in which the Inter­net unfor­tu­nately mir­rors real life.

Too many of us visit the same blogs over and over, inter­act­ing with our friends, instead of reach­ing out to folks we haven’t met yet and pur­pose­fully bring­ing them into our estab­lished net­work. I plan to recom­mit myself to doing this and chal­lenge you to do the same! This week, stop by five blogs you’ve never read before and leave com­ments for the authors, intro­duc­ing your­self and invit­ing them to rec­i­p­ro­cate by vis­it­ing your site. I think you’ll be grat­i­fied by the result.

Do Some­thing Different

In the com­ing weeks, I’m going to be explor­ing some new top­ics here at On the Hori­zon and exam­in­ing famil­iar issues from dif­fer­ent van­tage points.

I’m also going to host a blog car­ni­val for the first time! And look for some book reviews soon.

Susan’s arti­cle was a bless­ing to me this week because it moti­vated me to step back and con­sider if I wanted to con­tinue blog­ging ((As Lorelle on Word­Press points out, some­times tak­ing a break or quit­ting alto­gether is a wise deci­sion.)) and, if so, what direc­tion I wanted my efforts to take.

Remain Authen­tic

To Susan’s out­stand­ing list, I must add one item: It is imper­a­tive that, in order to be a suc­cess­ful blog­ger, one remains authen­tic. “Suc­cess” is a sub­jec­tive con­cept with a uniquely per­sonal mean­ing for indi­vid­ual blog­gers, of course. But once you have estab­lished your own blog­ging goals, I am con­vinced that they can only be achieved by remain­ing gen­uine, true to your own per­sonal belief sys­tem, val­ues and opinions.

I am well aware that the Chris­t­ian blog­ging com­mu­nity is full of fac­tions, as is the Chris­t­ian off-line world. There are groups and sub­groups that adhere to and espouse a par­tic­u­lar view­point, and many of the mem­bers of those infor­mal groups do not ven­ture out of their com­fort zone. I am not a mem­ber of such a net­work or, for lack of a bet­ter term, “clique” and have made a delib­er­ate choice to visit, link to and spot­light a wide vari­ety of sites here.

If my phi­los­o­phy makes folks uncom­fort­able or my can­dor about my beliefs and expe­ri­ences causes cer­tain folks not to read my posts or par­tic­i­pate in the dis­cus­sion here, I can only be sorry to see them go and wish them well. I can­not change the life events that inform and shape my view of the world and will not apol­o­gize for the man­ner in which I con­cep­tu­al­ize and express my faith. Nor do I expect any­one else to do so.

On the Hori­zon was founded to be some­thing that the insti­tu­tional church too often is not: All about rad­i­cal inclu­siv­ity, a phrase that itself has upset some tra­di­tion­al­ist visitors.

The irony is that, to me, the term expresses noth­ing more than a phi­los­o­phy of tol­er­ance and accep­tance of oth­ers’ view­points with­out judg­ment, con­dem­na­tion or rejec­tion of the indi­vid­ual. The bot­tom line is this: We are all believ­ers in one uni­ver­sal truth, one Sav­ior, one life to fol­low this one. The man­ner in which we express our beliefs should not divide us, but too often does because we are fear­ful of hear­ing the mes­sage deliv­ered in a man­ner to which we are not accustomed.

You don’t have to say God if you don’t want.
Say higher power or Being or Spirit or Light.
I say God because it’s the name I grew up with.
It’s how I know I’m home …

Sandy Carl­son
Writ­ing in Faith

Push­ing past fear is a tricky, often frus­trat­ing propo­si­tion but one that is well worth the effort. I know from expe­ri­ence that aban­don­ing some long-held ideas and prac­tices is exhil­a­rat­ing and lib­er­at­ing, while hold­ing on to ves­tiges of our past lives pro­vides com­fort and assurance.

I plan to con­tinue writ­ing about those and asso­ci­ated topics.

The Future is On the Horizon

After a brief period of reflec­tion, I have my blog­ging groove back and hope that you will be a reg­u­lar vis­i­tor and par­tic­i­pant in the dia­log here at On the Hori­zon because read­ers are, of course, the biggest and most impor­tant bless­ing to all of us who blog.

Have a won­der­ful Sunday!

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