Blogging Reflections as 2010 Winds Down

I don’t usually make official New Year’s resolutions. The end of the year and beginning of a new year is, however, not a bad time to reflect on things. I find myself doing that this week. I also find that this is probably not a good time for me to be making any major decisions since I’m feeling kind of depressed. I don’t know why exactly, but I can think of a few things that may be working there, but I don’t really need to share them here. Probably shouldn't blog when I'm feeling this way, either.... Funny how dates on a calendar can make you think about things you don't usually think about on a daily basis and can make you feel a little sad for no other reason.

Though I’m not making resolutions per se, there are some things I’m pondering here. First of all, I may need to blog and Facebook less in the new year. I’ve been thinking about blogging and what an odd thing it is. In some ways very personal, sharing my thoughts in my little space here, but in others by necessity not personal at all, being out here on the web and read by people who don’t really know me. In recent months I’ve found more and more that I wrote a post, published it and then decided to take it down. I’m finding that I really need to examine my motives in publishing posts. Sometimes it’s better to give a thought time before writing in the heat of emotion and hitting publish before giving that thought time to settle out. Sometimes the thought should not be published at all. I’ve toyed around with ending the blog altogether, but I’m not sure I’m really ready to do that.

I wrote a rather longish paragraph in the earlier version of this post but again, I deleted it. Another one of those thoughts that maybe didn't need to be published, except to maybe sum up more generally and say that you sometimes need a thick skin when blogging, too, and I haven't always been very skilled with that. That and the fact that blogging and Facebook can just eat up too much wasted time if you let them, too. I’m not so sure that what I’ve been writing is anything anyone else would care about reading, and therefore, what’s the point? If sitemeter has anything to say about it, it's not like many people are even reading anymore, anyhow. I guess I need to be more careful about what I blog.

Something else I’ve been thinking about is my personal time in God’s Word. Leslie wrote recently about how it’s hard to really reflect on what she was reading when she had 6 chapters to get through each day in a strict reading plan. I can relate to that. For the past several years I’ve made it a practice to read through the Bible in a year. It has been very good for me in that I don’t think I had ever read the Bible all the way through and chronologically before that, and it has very much helped me to see the Bible as a whole. But there were times when it became more about getting the daily reading done (check that box) than about knowing Jesus and really thinking about what I’d read that day. I think this year I’m going to slow it down and not be so concerned with getting through a reading plan and focus in on a book at a time and study it. I’m also wanting to focus on memorizing some passages of scripture and really hiding God’s Word in my heart. A few years ago when I was working in Awana at a church where we were members, the leadership challenged us leaders to memorize several scripture passages. I have always intended to work through that list, but I've not yet done it. I'm starting on Isaiah 53 now.

Just a couple of things I’m pondering as we wind down 2010 and get ready for 2011.