For the past week or so, for a variety of reasons - some related, some not - I’ve been letting this blog slide. I’m not sure why, but part of it is connected to the furor over blogrolling and numbers and hits and aggregators and TTLB and . . .

This pause has caused me to stop and think about how much time and - more importantly - how much emotional energy I invest in blogging. At best, the blogosphere creates pseudo-relationships: we are near without being close. Being an introvert, I like that feeling of distance and relative anonymity. But it’s not good for me: I need real relationships with real people. Besides, as a counselor, I already have one-sided relationships with a lot of people who think they know me but really don’t.

Then there’s the animosity and antagonism that is found in the comments of some thoughtful posts. Having grown up in a family where arguing was the appetizer and dessert of every meal, I’ve still got a belly full. I can argue pretty effectively, albeit not always rationally or fairly, but have come to realize it’s (a) a waste of time and (b) not Christlike - the attitudes, not necessarily the practice.

Finally, there’s a nagging doubt about the efficacy and efficiency of my particular blog. The two questions that I don’t have answers for are these: Do my posts really impact anyone? Is this the best use of whatever gifts and talents God has entrusted to me?

These and a lot of other questions roam around in my mind; I don’t have the answers. So I need to evaluate and decide what to do. In the meantime, I’ll just let my numbers fall and see if I go from being a “large mammal” to an “insignificant microbe” in the TTLB. At this point, I’d rather be insignificant in my real community than seemingly significant in (for me, at least) an artificial one.


2 Cor 1.13