This is exactly how I have felt — and in recent week I made myself blog any­way, though my heart wasn’t in it.

Per­haps it’s cycli­cal — I’m a lit­tle more opti­mistic about it these days — but I’m wait­ing for my enthu­si­asm about it to return.

Your ques­tion, “Oh, who cares?” can be the begin­ning of the end for a blog­ger! I descended into that same val­ley back in 2006, and it was only recently that I returned to writ­ing and post­ing. I hope you over­come that more quickly than I did!

I can’t speak for any­one else, but I always appre­ci­ate hear­ing what oth­ers have to say about the things that touch their lives — so if you’ll keep blog­ging, I’ll keep reading!

For me there was so much to talk about before Pascha and then after­ward I just wanted to be quiet. I felt like I’d talked too much and wanted to just keep my mouth shut for a while. This past week I’ve had the sim­i­lar thought as you, though. There were things I was think­ing would make a great blog entry, but then I just couldn’t really remem­ber them any­more, so I fig­ured it must not have been all that inter­est­ing anyway.

I’m glad you’re back.

I’ve checked peri­od­i­cally and I missed you! Please don’t quit. I care what you say/think/post.

Oh, you mean it mat­ters that any­one cares about what I think?
Actu­ally, yeah, blog­ging is some­what (or more like really) basi­cally a nar­cis­sis­tic endeavor, what with all the atten­tion to stats, hits and flags etc etc. I kinda go back and forth, but since I don’t do my blog as specif­i­cally an “Ortho­dox blog”, but just kinda what strikes me about just about any­thing, I don’t feel con­tin­u­ally com­pelled to say any­thing pithy or mean­ing­ful, or par­tic­u­larly need­ful for any­thing to any­one on the planet, and con­se­quently don’t feel guilty if I go for a week or two with­out say­ing any­thing par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing or “insight­ful”. Though I con­fess I have a smidgen of blog envy for the folks who seem to have rivers of “spir­i­tual thoughts” and informed opin­ions on meaty and mean­ing­ful sub­jects.
Any­way, nice to see you back, even to just say you’re not sure you want to be.

I’d become gen­uinely con­cerned; had thought lately of con­tact­ing you per­son­ally. Though I have good thoughts, I am a sloth­ful man. Glad you’re okay.

Wel­come back.

Christ is Risen!

So it sounds like some­thing that blog­gers go through peri­od­i­cally, and it’s prob­a­bly at that point that a lot just drop out. Which isn’t a bad deci­sion if you can’t find any value to your­self or oth­ers. And I’ll leave that door open — it may yet turn out to be the most grace­ful way out.

But my lit­tle heart is touched by know­ing that oth­ers know the type of thing and even won­dered where I was, too. Guess I’ll keep swing­ing a while longer.

s-p:
You raise a good point. I had thought of this as a blog that’s mostly about Ortho­dox stuff, but I kept going off-topic enough times that I finally stopped apol­o­giz­ing for it.

But then, at the time I got into it, I thought that if there’s one thing that we’re really miss­ing in the Ortho­dox world, it’s infor­ma­tion about how ordi­nary Ortho­dox peo­ple are liv­ing out the faith. We’ve got lots of good teach­ing, the exam­ple of many saints and good advice from spir­i­tual teach­ers. But how does that look when it’s ‘at home’ (as the Eng­lish say)? That’s what I think Ortho­dox blogs are really help­ful with, for me at least. So I like reports of what peo­ple do on their job, or how they han­dle pain, or some­thing they thought was funny. That’s the human stuff, and it can still be the good stuff.

Fr. Hun­ey­cutt:

He is risen indeed!

I was just think­ing of you today, it was meant to be! Christ is Risen!

You touch on an issue that’s been eat­ing at me for quite a while now, Grace. In a nut­shell its like “inter­net Ortho­doxy is all about “Ortho­doxy”, its not about “peo­ple”. The corol­lary is, peo­ple know us as “Ortho­dox” but not as “Chris­tians” on our blogs, pod­casts and web­sites. That’s kind of what’s dri­ving “Steve the Builder” right now. Its about being a Chris­t­ian human being informed by “Ortho­doxy” (I’m sure there’s nuances of that phrase that some­one will take issue with, but I can’t come up with a bet­ter one off the top of my head right now.) I told some­one the other day I’m con­cerned that every­one on the inter­net knows con­verts as “Ortho­dox”, but not as “Chris­tians”. Any­way, its like Jesus told sto­ries about ordi­nary life that illu­mined “ortho­doxy”, (as did St. Paul in his metaphors for the spir­i­tual life). There has to be an inter­sec­tion of “real life” and “The Faith”. If not, we are mere dog­mati­cians and no good to any­one in the end.

Glad you’re still choppin’.

As some­one given to these indul­gences… and who shares the impulse to get on with­out it, too.… I think there’s a rea­son to go on… and offer as echo to your note on ordi­nary Ortho­dox life — what­ever that is — that it seems to this Ortho­dude.… that there may be as much teach­ing from our anony­mous saints as from our bet­ter known.

True… it ain’t easy to learn from them because they’re silent for the most part… but they’re also the folks who pre­served the writ­ings of the folks we have and have come to know. Some cases we have a name and no more. More cases… not even that. Maybe blogs are a way of record­ing the voices of today’s anony­mous saints… that the faith­ful might speak not just from the top qual­ity all stars as it has in the past, but per­haps this era needs to hear also from below … that the Body … the whole of it.… might be known in all its fullness.

I leave that to you guys. As for me, I’m trust­ing to be known mostly for my full-of-itness… or some­thing like that

Hang in there. Might just be this was a hard but fruit­ful Lent… and it’s still computing!