Friday 19 September 2008

Just Another Practice whilst wearing Smarter Clothes

My brother-in-law sent me such an encouraging e-mail yesterday. He likes what I write, and says:


Surely the important thing is you've enjoyed thinking about what to say and
what you'd like to tell people. When you don't, you'll stop.

This brings home to me what this blog is for: it's for me, for my pleasure, for my writing development and for my record of what matters to me. If others enjoy it, and I hope they do, that's an added bonus.

It is very important to me what people think of me. Just a couple of weeks ago, I volunteered to take on a role in my church. I was excited by the idea and also pleased and flattered that I was considered up to it, good enough. It transpired that the job didn't need doing, and I was deeply disappointed. Underneath my good motives, was an agenda all my own. I wanted to be seen to be fantastic, I wanted to people to think and speak highly of me. It had become about glorifying myself. It was a harsh lesson for me. I thought I was over a lot of that stuff, but there it was, lurking in the background, just waiting for an excuse to come out. I find it easy to be flippant about my failings, to make a little joke of them, but to honestly confess is uncomfortable. A wise friend told me this week that one way to conquer such lurking sin is to bring it out into the open, into the light.

I have taken my stat counter off my internet bookmarks, (I'm not sure if I'm ready to take it off the blog altogether) and this will stop me checking it so frequently. I'm going to write about what matters to me, my children, my faith journey, my Home Ed journey and other stuff that catches my interest or makes me shout or laugh.

My brother-in-law plays in a band. He compared my blog to his performances:


It 's not the end of the world if the customers don't turn up - it's just
another practice whilst wearing smarter clothes !

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's a great line. You have a good BIL there! And I think many of us struggle a bit with worrying too much about what other people think of us. It is hard work building your own self confidence and being able to do rely on your own judgement. We're all working on it.

Gaynor said...

Yes, I it is great line and one I shall adopt as a motto!