My Blogging Life and Musings on My Writing Identity

Last updated on: April 28, 2014 at 2:59 pm by Joel Willitts

My Blogging Life and Musings on My Writing Identity 2014-04-28T14:59:10-04:00 Joel Willitts

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Mike will attest to this. About once a year or so I email him and say something like, “Mike, I don’t know if I should continue to be your blog mate. I’ve not blogged in so long. And I feel guilty for not contributing to our blog. Maybe I should give it up.” Every time he has told me, “No worries! Blog when you can. I understand”. I sometimes remind him that when he invited me to join him a decade ago, I was reluctant – I didn’t see myself as a blogger; and still don’t. What I don’t tell him, but what I often think is this: “Besides everyone knows its really your blog anyway, who am I fooling.” After all, many readers think my posts are Mike’s anyway; Someone even asked Mike a question in comments on one of my recent posts. The little I blog, it would make little difference if I stopped. I hesitated to write this – it’s a little to vulnerable isn’t it? – but part of the reason I find blogging a burden is because of just these kinds of feelings.

Let’s face it. I’m a lousy blogger. If it were up to me, there wouldn’t be a blog. I am incapable of following the strategy for a successful blog. I blog in fits and starts. As now, until today it had been several weeks since I’ve posted something. And I rarely even read blogs. So I don’t write posts consistently and I don’t read blogs – not a good recipe for a blogger!

The excellent bloggers I know, such as Mike or certainly Scot McKnight (and I could name many others), are serial writers: they are always in a state of writing. So a blog is simply an outlet for their constant production. Over the course of the years after my Ph.D., since 2006 say, I have tried to structure my life so I can become a serial writer. I have made numerous weekly schedules in an attempt to create space for writing. I’ve gotten up at 3:30 am many times to try to get in a couple of good hours of writing before the twins wake up. But I as far as it goes, I’ve failed to become a serial writer. And now my energy is waning. Even in this year of sabbatical I’ve struggled to produce. Now the reasons for this are for quite a different post, but something is happening in me in the last handful of months.

In the past, I’ve chalked up my difficulty to write (blogs or otherwise) to the stage of life – for goodness sake I have twins! I’ve been in ministry; I’ve been developing a teaching career; I need to make money; I like the Yankees – well you get the idea. I’m always pining to my wife about my need for more time to write. “Karla, I need time alone to write.” “I need to get away to write.” She’s so tired of hearing me say that! Now I’m getting tired of feeling it and saying it. Why do I feel such pressure to write, but can’t seem to find the time to do it regularly? Something is beginning to dawn on me, although this is by no means the final report. Perhaps I’m not what I have struggled so hard to be. Perhaps I’ve tried to be something God has not fit me for. Perhaps my struggle to be a serial writer has less to do with a lack of discipline and more to do with gifting and desire.

Is serial writing something you do or something you are? I know you can discipline yourself to do a good many things. So I believe you can discipline yourself to be a serial writer, at least for stents. But I think there are are natural born writers and there are those who struggle to write. I’m not saying that I can’t write, I believe I can write and write well. I also believe I can be more disciplined than I am and improve my current level of writing. I know this because I have. I have worked hard to be a good writer since the day very early in my Ph.D. Markus Bockmuehl, my PhD supervisor, told me plainly my writing was poor. I spent that next summer reading Dostoyevsky novels (The Idiot, Brothers) to gain an ear for scholarly prose. And since then I’ve not stopped working to improve.

But I’m getting weary. I don’t know if I want to get up many more mornings at 3:30 am to write. More than that though, I think I’m coming to grips with myself. I’m becoming connected. I’m beginning to notice, name “sorrow” the feeling I get when I hear of some friend or peer publishing another book, instead of burying the feeling in a fury of work disconnecting from myself and those around me. I’m tired of pining, of an angst-filled spirit. I’m tired of trying to keep up. I’m gotten curious as to why I feel the way I do.

Yes, I’m 43 years old and only now coming to terms with who I am. Again vulnerability – this has shame potential all over it. Shouldn’t I have figured this out by now? I’m coming to terms with the fact that for all of my adult life I have lived a disconnected, shallow emotional life. The reason: I have attempted to compensate for the harm I experienced as a boy by disregarding feelings especially of fear and sorrow (but also intimacy) and throwing myself recklessly into my weaknesses and into exciting opportunities. This makes for an exciting and accomplished life no doubt – and I have lived one. But it is a thin, burdensome life that is difficult to sustain. I know this can sound like a whole load of psychobabble and probably a year ago I would have agreed, but these days that sentence makes perfect sense and is giving me a path to a fuller life. The life God wants for me. In the last couple of months, I’ve reflected on the possibility, a frightful but liberating one, that I’ve spent a decade and a half striving to be something I’m not.

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