I’ve always enjoyed writing. But something happened toward the end of my last blogging experience. I burned out.
I published “The Assembling of the Church” from March 21, 2006 until November 10, 2013… that’s over 7 1/2 years… 2791 days to be exact. During that time, I published about 4300 posts… or approximately 1.5 posts per day. No one else required this amount of blogging from me. I required it from myself.
I think I only continued as long as I did because of the 27,000+ comments that my readers left on the blog. I enjoyed the discussion and community very much.
But I burned out.
I’m glad a took a break from blogging, because it helped me learn something about myself…
Writing is therapeutic for me.
Putting my thoughts down on ink and paper (ummm… figuratively) helps me think, helps me prepare, helps me reduce stress.
But the pressure of wanting (needing?) to constantly publish something was stressful. That desire added more stress than the writing itself removed… So, I stopped writing.
Now, I’m ready to write again… as long as I can stay within the therapeutic realm and out of the stressed out realm. So, for now, I feel no need to write every day. I will write when I want to write. If I don’t publish for several days, so be it.
As long as writing continues to be therapeutic, then I will continue to write.
What about you? Is writing therapeutic for you as well?
Yes writing is therapeutic for me as well.
I’m glad that I’m not the only one, Gus!
Absolutely for a bunch of reasons but I get the pressure of producing something all the time. I try not to watch my stats and just blog what I want to blog but I still like it when it seems like people are reading and reacting. Often for me my blog is a way to let off steam or simply think out loud in a public forum but it also is a discipline. It is easy to stop blogging and then the break turns into a hiatus.
Thanks, Arthur. I think that those of us who enjoy writing often enjoy it for different reasons.
Nice, Yeah, I love speaking the Word–never get tired of that! It’s great to talk with others and help them see the benefits of a relationship with your Heavenly Father or with someone. We’re here all together reading and writing, trying to help each-other and understand each other so we CAN live the More Abundant life. Otherwise, why are we even here, reading? Just to Read? No–To Learn, To get attention, To make a difference, To help someone, To give in Who “You” are in some way or shape or form.
Anyway–as for writing–I’m terrible at it. I know I must be breaking rules all the time and you’ll see that in my writing–so I apologize for that.
God Bless
Jim
I’ll never be a grammar Nazi, Jim… so write away… however you want to write.
I find it therapeutic to some degree but find that it sometimes a lonely affair. I’ve been musing lately about the differences between dominant verbal cultures such as my wife’s who is Cambodian, versus ours. I find our emphasis on reading and writing limited when I compare the communication between my wife’s family. They don’t text or email or blog I read newspapers or have much interaction with print at all. They talk, and they talk more, endlessly. They tell stories, and sing and laugh a lot. and they understand each other implicitly, without a lot of explanation. after 30 years of living in both worlds, I’ve come to wish that they could be combined. I’ve also been thinking about the Scriptures, and the culture that they were birthed in. It was a verbal culture for the most part. I don’t think writing and reading were the norm but storytelling was, and singing and prayer were. i’m beginning to suspect that it was with intentional design that God allowed Gutenberg to build the first mass production writing machine, more than a millennium after the Scriptures were finished compilation.
I was thinking of the scripture ” Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God ”
We’ve come to associate the word of God with the printed Bible, and it is, but when Jesus spoke those words, it wasn’t, or I don’t think he meant the written Torah. and he didn’t say that Faith comes by reading. and he didn’t say that Faith comes by reading. It may, but he singled out hearing. I think he meant audible words and physical speaking spoken and heard.
I think we moderns have lost our way somewhere along the timeline, and don’t really get how important speaking, and hearing, and the different kind of understanding obtained that way then by reading and writing. and that’s what I sense I’m missing, not having been raised in a verbal culture, rather than a highly literate print culture. I have well over 2000 valuable books in my home. None of them are novellas. They are scholarly works of scripture, Theology, eschatology and commentaries, as well as many many quarts of history, sociology, psychology, geography and science and other languages and biographies and maps etc. I’ve been reading them for more than four decades. I have them and read them as tools in my singular pursuit of God. My wife on the other hand, Who was a slave under the Khmer Rouge, is almost illiterate in her language and English.
and I mean illiterate in terms of reading and writing only. But her ability to communicate verbally, and understand language, both hers and ours is uncanny. In her pursuit of God, without books and other written materials, she is wiser than I. there’s just some deeply innate grasp of God in her and there’s just some deeply innate grasp of God in her and others that I marvel at.
I don’t pit hearing and speaking against reading and writing. but I do wish that we could speak what we read and write more, to one another. I suspect we would discover a richness of communication and understanding beyond what we currently have.
Thanks for you reply, Greg. Hopefully writing will never replace speaking to one another. But, like you said, some cultures value one over another.
I understand what Greg wrote. Nothing wrong. Just remind I myself am deaf. Reading is like hearing because most deaf read also sign language is like hearing too. I enjoy to read what they write.
Thank you
Perry
Simplicity is the Key–
Jim
Yeah I find writing and especially blogging therapeutic. I think I understand the pressure of needing to write. I also get King Arthur’s point about it being a discipline and a release.
I want to continue to do it as long as I enjoy it and I applaud your hiatus and return only as long as it remains in the therapeutic zone for you.
Me too, Christopher!
The internet is a fast tool of communication to carry information worldwide, but it is also a tool for distracting and luring man from his real path of life. Daniel has predicted the increase of knowledge at the time of the end.
“But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.” Daniel 12:4
I’m no longer using Facebook and Twitter, I also don’t use much my mobile, so I can concentrate on my real life and my true duty, and relationship with those around me. I now have realized that the knowledge taught by Christian Churches is false. It has been twisted and used for brainwashing billions of people, and to lead the entire world into its own destruction.
I have removed all of my learned Christian knowledge and return to the level zero to read the Bible and submit myself in obedience to the Most High God’s commandments.
Reading is helpful, but writing should only be used as much as talking. Reading is like listening; it helps nourishing the spirit. But writing and speaking will drain the spirit, so it must be controlled.
I mostly read and listen to other people, but write and say little.
God bless.
Duc, if writing drains your spirit, then you should limit how much you write.
I guess I’ve always wanted to be a writer.
Several years ago, I wrote a few little essays and started a blog. Nobody read them but me (well, I shamed my son into reading them). In the process, I finally learned what my English Composition teacher tried to teach me. As a bonus, my inflated ego was downsized. You’ve encouraged me to take another run at it.
Duc and greg got me thinking. Writing and speaking are like cutting firewood. I enjoyed going into the woodlot and cutting down trees and chopping them up, because I was looking forward to sitting around the fire with friends and loved ones. Good writing gives us fuel for good conversation.
That’s a great point, Jim
Welcome back. You inspired me to start blogging again after ignoring it for 2 years. Definitely can be therapeutic
That’s great, Billy!
Glad you are back! 🙂
I used to find it therapeutic. Now I don’t write much and I’m closer to needing therapy.
Been there, done that, Bobby
I love writing. I journal when I’m angry or overwhelmed or excited – it helps me take stock and work out the feelings in my head. But I’m just coming to the end of a year of full-time study – I submitted my two final assignments today, one was 6000 words long and the other was 7000. I’m rather exhausted by that kind of writing!
Yes, Kathleen, different kinds of writing affects me differently too. For example, I often have to do business writing, and it drains me.
Writing is generally therapeutic for me as well. Blogging was a way for me to organize my thoughts on a subject, whether theology or baseball. I could develop my thoughts over time and come to conclusions that were beyond “the way things are always done.” It was a way to move forward in life. Since I was the writer, I took the freedom to write what I believed instead of believing things I heard from others. I can look back through my blogs and see what kind of mindset I was in back then. It’s kind of a life history with words instead of pictures.
I work in a quality control laboratory and technical writing is part of my job. Although completely different from blogging, it allows me to organize things in a different kind of structure. I have written many lab procedures that require mastering every aspect of an experiment before I can communicate to others how to do it.
Writing is challenging and difficult most of the time, but I usually found it worth it.
Thanks for the great comment, Steve. Your comment is better than my post!