Hello…

As you pull into the church parking lot, you notice the normal throng of people gathered by the front doors, the smoke billowing around them as they take a last drag before going to swear off their addictions. You push through, nodding to one of the guys you met at another meeting, and enter the glass doors into a dimly lit lobby. You hear a small roar down the hall and you make your way into the flourescent glare of a fellowship hall with run down banquet tables and metal folding chairs. You make your way to the aluminum 100 cup coffee maker, grabbing a styrofoam cup (knowing that you are contributing to global warming in doing do) and filling it up with the black sludge that passes for coffee. Then, you head to the podium as the crowd eases into their seats and the hum dies down. They look at you with anticipation, as if you might actually have something of worth to say, as you begin:

Hello, my name is Jay, and I used to be a blogger.

“Hello Jay.”

I say that I used to be a blogger for there was once a time when writing something online bordered on an obsession. I, like many of you, was fixated on having something to say, and I, like many of you, regularly checked my stats to see how many folks were reading. It was important enough to me that I even weighed a decision about a job on the companies unwillingness to let me keep writing. It’s a decision that I don’t regret, but it is a sign of how important participating in the community of bloggers was to me.

More recently, life has gotten in the way, and the time I have for writing online has diminished. Yes, I still post things, and some of them have some meaning for folks, but the fact is that it doesn’t have the same draw that it used to. Some of this is due to the competitors to the blogosphere, things like Facebook and Twitter. I don’t need to blog as much when I can quickly point folks to things in just a few words. I also don’t blog as much because there are simply too many things to do as a pastor, church leader, community leader, etc. It’s not that I don’t want to share things. Rather, the things that I am working on are tending to be more locally targeted and less connected to a broader audience.

Of course, this sounds like the lead up to an announcement that I am giving up blogging entirely, and there would be some very good reasons why I should do so. But this is less of an ending than a realization that I am in a different place in life, and that I simply won’t be worrying about whether I need to post anything or not, or whether anyone is reading anything or not. I originally got into this blogging thing a bunch of years ago for myself, and as both the medium and myself mature, there is a reality that the original desire is still valid.

So, know that I am still around, but don’t have any great expectations for profound thought or witty posts in 2009. To quote one far greater than myself, “I will be what I will be…” through the power of the author of that phrase.

I am still a blogger . . . but not an obsessed one.

The audience claps and you sit down as another person moves to the podium. You watch as they say, “Hello, I am Gavin. And I am a blogger…”