Blogtober once again

A few years ago I started doing “Blogtober” with Mark Sanders, a friend of mine from New Life Christian Church United in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. At the time I was regularly blogging as part of my pastoral position, and it was relatively easy to work the word of the day into what I was writing.

Three years ago I left that position and my need to write as part of my church work dissipated. My blog still exists online, and although I occasionally made a few half-hearted attempts to revitalize it from time to time, I never really found the same kind of urgency to keep it current. Unfortunately, as I stopped posting, I also found out that I was missing out on one of the best unspoken parts of writing, the escape that I experience from having a creative outlet.

This week another “Blogtober” challenge gets under way. Once again, Mark posted a series of 31 words and invited the writers in his life to take part. Yesterday I spent an hour or so crafting my first post. It was a commentary on how unbearable I found it to watch Missouri’s senator Eric Schmitt’s farcical performance in the Jack Smith hearing earlier this week. There were footnotes, links to other articles, and a call to refrain from bearing false witness.

In the end, however, I refrained from posting what I wrote. Although I still believe everything I said in the text, the truth is that it was not ready for primetime. As someone who has not written publicly for several years, I was simply trying to do too much too fast. To use a baseball metaphor, I was swinging for the fences instead of just trying to make contact with the ball.

Blogtober is an inherently low-stakes adventure. My goal at this point is very modest. I hope to use this month as an opportunity to get back into the habit of writing and posting. Hopefully over time I will be able to rebuild my creative muscle memory and start posting things that are truly worth sharing with the rest of the world. In the meantime I am grateful to Mark for the invitation to get back into the swing of things.

Hopefully a few more trips to the authorial plate will do the trick and Blogtober will once more make writing a regular part of my life.