I'm Back... For Now

I'll admit it. I've been a terrible blogger these last couple months. Both of December's post were taken directly from my November Newsletter. Just shameful, John. I've reprimanded myself and hope to be blogging in full force again soon. I've just posted a couple picture-heavy blogs that I thought might interest a few people who are interested in either beef or food in general.

My blogging pre-YAV wasn't reflective enough, I felt. And my blogging during my time as a YAV has felt a little overly serious, which isn't my style. So, yet again, here I am trying to strike a healthy balance. I'm hoping if I allow myself to be a little lighter here, I might feel like blogging more often - instead of making myself feel like my blogs are under the scrutiny of an admissions committee (which my seminary application is about to be).

Letting Go

When I began this blog, my intention was that it would become a safe place for me to express my thoughts as I reflected on various aspects of my life. I wanted to explore those things that deeply matter to me. I have failed.

Looking back on my recent posts, I see that I became frightened. I expected that come September this blog would be visited by various people hoping to keep up with my adventures in India, many of whom would disagree with my political, religious, and or social views, which are tightly linked. My response? Instead of sharing my thoughts on significant world events that matter to me, I chronicled my (often boring) day-to-day life only at a surface level.

I realized over the course of the past month that I too often, in the hope of maintaining peaceful relations, censor myself around those that I disagree with. As an open and honest person, I am troubled deeply by this injustice I'm doing to myself and others. I am tired of holding back.

I feel that we all have the responsibility, as citizens of a global society, to speak out about what we see as injustices or to praise efforts we feel are making a positive impact on people's lives. This revelation became even more clear to me as I prepared my first sermon over the past two weeks. After some effort, I was able to let go and proclaim to the congregation what I truly believed God was telling me. I didn't let fear of disagreement become a roadblock to what I saw as the truth.

I now hope to reclaim this blog as a place where I will step outside of my comfort zone in an effort to vocalize what I am bothered, excited, and moved by in the world. I will naturally continue to inform people about what I am up to, but never at the expense of a deeper honesty.

Quickie

So, I'm back in Kerrville for a couple of days after my weekend spent in Austin. I had a good time in Austin with four of my friends at my pseudo-belated-birthday-celebration. There was a lot of good food! 

And now I'm hanging out in Kerrville until tomorrow! I thought I'd write a short blog to get my back into the swing of things since I've been a failure at posting the last couple weeks. However, I've taken a lot of pictures on my new camera so that should help motivate me as I'll have a jumping off point to update about my life.  

Until then, don't do drugs!

¿Por qué?

Tonight I deleted two blogs that I previously started and unsuccessfully maintained; one on MSN Spaces (10 posts total) and one on Myspace (1 post). Before deleting them, I saved them as drafts on this blog so that I will have a record of them. I still don't really know what I want to accomplish with this blog, but I have some ideas for motivation.

First, I have a horrible memory, so this will be helpful to look back on later in life. I anticipate that being even more helpful when I'm in Guatemala/India next year as I expect after a year of being back in the states it will all be a blur anyway. I want to be able to look back and tell my kids about my experiences and I believe this will be a helpful tool.

Also, I will use this blog while overseas to inform people of what I'm doing on a daily basis as I don't imagine I'll be making many phone calls. This way, people who care can stop by and see what I'm up too without me responding to a ton of separate emails. However, I really do hope people email me, because I'm going to want to keep up with their lives also.

Thirdly, I have found, when I'm able to keep up with it, blogging really helps me process my thoughts and experiences which will be particularly helpful when living overseas. I'm sure I'll have some crazy, uncomfortable, unnerving experiences that will need intense exploring to make a little sense of. I imagine that I'll keep a journal and mark certain selections as blog worthy so that I'm not subjecting everyone to all of my rambling thoughts. 

Also, I installed a program to monitor the traffic on my blog because I was curious to see who visits. The answer: absolutely no one. The reason: I won't tell anyone the address. However, I had at least imagined that some anonymous strangers had stumbled over it at this point. No, they haven't. I'm ok with this though. I have a pretty eclectic audience in my head that I'm still writing too and when I do decide to put the address out there, the blog will be well established and I should have found a good rhythm.

Until then, I'm enjoying talking to you, my lovely, imaginary audience. And thank you for not criticizing me.