It's been a while...

 So how have you all been?  

I know blogging is a lot less of a thing now and everyone's over on Youtube or TikTok, but I'd rather write than do video content, so here I am.  I want to start writing again, and this is where I can self publish my content.

I don't know what direction I'll take this yet.  Still looking at life and faith and mental health mostly, as those are what my journey has been and still is.  Maybe more book reviews too.

And art.

And probably cat pics.

This is Taco Cat.

So, this is an invitation to resume this journey with me.  Ready?

Taken for granted? Not this blogger.

Earlier this week I got the following email:

"We are working on putting together an exciting new piece on ‘New Zealand's Top Mummy Bloggers Travel Tips for 2013’ and you have been selected as one of the Top 30 bloggers for interview. Congratulations on making the list! I am writing to ask whether you might spare 5 minutes of your time to answer the 9 quick interview questions below?
Once complete we will list the best answers received into a fabulously designed post and link to your blog as well as your social media channels from within the post. In exchange for your time, you will gain exposure for your blog as we promote the post through our social media channels "

The first thing that raised my suspicions was that I was apparently a Top 30 blogger.  I’m pretty realistic about how many of you are actually reading this, and it’s not the top 30.

Then there was the fact that my time is only worth a bit of exposure. It felt a bit like being taken for granted. It was not like being asked to do a product review in return for a sample of whatever I’m reviewing, I don’t mind that.  In fact I find that a lot of fun to do, if the product is interesting and relevant to me. (Hint hint to any brands out there reading this).

So I turned to the Parents Online community to see what they thought, and discovered that nearly everyone in that group had received the same email. 

Vicki from Vegemitevix has posted her reply to the promoter:

I was so excited to read your email and to find out that I am one of the top 30 Kiwi travel bloggers. How wonderful! Did that mean you were about to offer me a fabulous trip to a five star spa, as I have been offered previously in the trip from the […] (Read the rest here – it’s brilliant)

It occurred to me that in a larger country, the PR firm may have got away with this.  But us Kiwi Bloggers are a pretty social lot, and we swap notes with each other. 

How many of you other bloggers also got this email?  How did you respond to it?

Apparently I have Awesomeness

“It’s Official – I’m Awesome,” I posted on Facebook.

“Of course you’re awesome,” said my husband from the computer desk a few minutes later.

“But this is someone I’m not even married to who think so too!”

No, honestly, I’m not getting a swelled head, it just feels good when someone writes something nice about you.

Maria from New Zealand It Is Then wrote the following:

Okay, next are two ladies I met at a bloggers' conference this autumn: one's Rachelle and the other's Claudia.
Neither seemed particularly captivating over the internet when I first saw them register for the conference, but boy did I like them both in person! And now as I keep reading their blogs, I have the same feeling I sometimes get with Treena: how is it that I'm not getting more of that awesomeness across from the screen? It's like I feel a little cheated even, like there's so much going on in their heads and in their lives, and I'm just getting little measly snippets here and there.

So basically, there’s not enough of ME coming through in my blog.

Sorry about that folks, it’s not my intention to deprive you of my awesomeness.

When I’m sitting here alone with the thoughts in my head, writing them down, there’s no interaction or dialogue happening.  It’s just going onto a screen then out into a void of the blog-iverse.

Otherwise, when I’m sitting having a conversation with a friend, it’s a different dynamic.  There’s instant feedback, and the conversation will go in all sorts of different directions.  My thoughts will go to different and (if it’s the right kind of friend) deeper places.

So a lot of who I am is sort of defined in interaction with other people.  Which is not always possible to write about because it’s as much about the other person as it is about me and not always appropriate for a public forum.

The challenge for me is to work on that part of my writing.  To let more of myself show.  So you all get to see my awesomeness too.

Just start writing

I don’t really like blogging about the minute of daily life.  I want my posts to be interesting and meaningful.  Which is a great theory, but falls down when nothing much interesting and meaningful is happening in my life.  The last few weeks have been… routine.

So the challenge is to try to find meaning and inspiration in the daily routines of life.  The little ups and downs that no-one really wants to read about.

Miss Nine played a game involving a stick floating down a stream, and racing to catch it again at the bottom. 

Sometimes the stick got caught in an eddy, and didn’t seem to make much progress, until eventually it swung back around (or got poked) and caught the current again.

Some people talk about being in a rut.  Or being like that stick in the eddy, needing to be poked to get moving again.  But I don’t believe that’s where my life is.  It’s more like just being in deep slow water.  I’m still moving forward, but there’s not much to see on the surface.  A season to relax and brace myself for whatever rapids are ahead. 

Relevance

Two years ago, I wrote a post titled “Two Copper Coins”.  I made a metaphor alluding to, but not directly quoting, the Biblical story in Luke 21:

Jesus looked up and saw rich people putting their gifts into the treasury;  he also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. He said, ‘Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.’
Luke 21:1-4 (NIVUK)

I wasn’t too surprised the first time that I got a comment from a coin trader.  They’d presumably stumbled upon my post when searching for possible sales or purchases, but then read and made an appropriate comment.

More recently, I got a comment from a different coin trader asking to see the copper coins in question.  I was surprised they’d completely missed the point of my post – the coins in my case were a metaphor.

I related this story during the bloggers conference, then in the process of telling the story, I realised that the others didn’t know the reference to the widow’s offering either. 

I had forgotten that not everyone reading this blog has read the Bible for as many years as I have.  The stories I grew up with in Bible in Schools classes are no longer common knowledge.  I apologise now to my readers for my assumption that you all knew what I was talking about in my Faith posts.

I’ve also been at the other end of this, when I was trying to follow a theological discussion that mostly seemed to involve lots of long words ending in –ism and –ology and acronyms of Jargonese.  I got lost very quickly.

The challenge for me is to balance my “Faith” posts between those readers who are even better qualified than I am to write about faith, and those readers who have no Christian background, but are still interested in this part of my life (otherwise they aren’t reading these posts anyway).

Good theology should be easy to explain and understand, and also be real and relevant to daily life.

When I’m reading or listening to Christian teaching I tend to find myself asking three questions:

1. Does this make sense?  Do I actually understand what’s being said or is it some academic waffle that’s over my head? Does it line up with what theology I already understand?
2. Do I agree?  Often this is a subjective, gut level feeling.  Sometimes very reasonable sounding arguments just feel wrong.  Experience has taught me to trust my instincts.
3. So what?  How is this relevant?  There are discussions out there in the Christian world today that have about as much relevance to how the ordinary believer lives out his or her faith as the supposed medieval discussion about angels dancing on a pinhead.

When I write about my faith I want to be thinking and writing about the “So what?”  How do I personally apply my faith in my daily life as a spouse, parent, employee, friend and neighbour?  I hope this gives me something to say that’s relevant to all my readers.

I pray that what I write is helpful and meaningful to you in your life and faith journey.

What can happen in the Blog-iverse…

Just before Christmas I compiled a list of my favourite 20 Christian books.  I included a newly published book I considered a potential “classic”.

Next minute:

WOO HOO!"Kneeling with Giants" made #7 in @adulcia 's "Top 20 Christian Books List"!@ivpbooks@adriannawright bit.ly/UeSxq0
— Gary Neal Hansen (@garynealhansen) December 5, 2012

@ivpress @adulcia Okay, it was #8, but I was so excited I apparently blinked at the wrong moment.
— Gary Neal Hansen (@garynealhansen) December 5, 2012

"Slow down," I thought, "It's just lil' ol' me!"

I'd never have imagined a book review (unsolicited and un-sponsored) on my blog would lead to an international skype call between my study group and the author. (Thank you so much, Gary, for being willing to sacrifice your sleep at 2:30am to meet with us).  Sometimes the unimaginable happens in the blog-iverse.  God's kingdom knows neither geographic boundaries nor time-zones.

Unlike nearly every other book about prayer I've read, Gary doesn't write about what he thinks  prayer should be, instead he points the reader in the direction of historical "Giants" such as Benedict of Nursia, Augustine of Hippo, John Calvin, Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Avila and Andrew Murray, and several others.  Gary provides very practical guidelines for putting each tradition of prayer into practice.  This is what makes Kneeling with Giants such a powerful resource.  It's not the book itself, the book just points the way. It was in the actual praying and entering the very presence of God that I found myself glimpsing depths I'd previously only lightly touched the surface of.

Our study group has now reached the end of the book (Gary, you can tell your son we have now read all the words!) but I feel I want to go back again and again to these prayer traditions.  I will certainly be spending more time with Teresa of Avila, the Puritans and the anonymous medieval author of The Cloud of Unknowing, among others.

My journey into prayer has barely begun.  Who wants to come along with me?

He Tangata

I don’t usually have a reason to come into this part of the city.  Every time I do the landscape has changed.

I still don’t like how many empty spaces there are where there used to be a bustling city.  I’m still not immune to the crunch and rattle of demolition machinery.

How do I find the words to explain I feel to visiting bloggers?  I struggle to even find words to describe how I feel to myself.

Yet the spirit of Christchurch is not the buildings, or lack thereof.  As the proverb says:

He aha te mea nui o te ao?
He tangata! He tangata! He tangata!

What is the most important thing in the world?
It is people! It is people! It is people!

This is what the Inaugural National Bloggers Conference highlighted for me.  It wasn’t a corporate style conference held in an expensive hotel.  It was a community gathering, hosted at a local library and in various cafes around the city.

Image: Sophie Slim

I enjoyed learning some new techy stuff thanks to Talia and Meghan. (You can expect a gradual spring-clean down the side bar in the near future).  But the most important part of the gathering was getting to know some wonderful people.

Ka Pai to Miriam, Juliet, Treena and all the team.  You were great.

P.S. – check out what else everyone got up to over the weekend here.

Bloglovin?

Trying to sort out what I'm going to do when Google Reader dies.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Voice

I’ve spent the last few weeks pondering on my writing “voice.” 

When I started this blog I had the intention that it wouldn’t be about the surface stuff of my life, the bloggers’ small-talk about my day to day life.  I wanted to be able to write about more meaningful, deeper things. 

I’d only just got past my first post when the Canterbury Earthquake of September 2010 hit, and for the last two and a half years my “voice” has been defined by my journey through a rather unique seismic event and its aftermath.  But I think the time has come for my writing to move on from that, before it starts becoming “same-old”.

The problem is I don’t have a definite direction to move into.  I’ve drafted several posts that sort of grope around in the dark in different directions but none of them seem to actually be going anywhere.  I find myself asking “So what?”

Somewhere in the depths of me is a voice that’s waiting to be found and heard.   I’ve been spending my time in prayer more than writing, and as I turn my attention to the Creator I trust Him to help me discover the creativity He has placed within me.

And I’m hoping for some synergy at the Bloggers Connecting conference here in Christchurch next month to help inspire me too.

Centenary

No I’m not 100 years old, but this is my 100th post.

To celebrate, here’s my most significant posts out of the last 100:

Christchurch Earthquake Take 2 (posted 23 Feb 2011, 118 Pageviews)

The Picture the Earth Drew (posted 21 Jun 2011, currently 263 Pageviews)

Poo flinging monkeys (posted 22 Jun 2011, 112 Pageviews)

2012 - The year of the rebuild (posted 17 Jan 2012, 142 Pageviews)

Goodbye Old Friend (posted 11 Mar 2012, 119 Pageviews)

Thank you to all my readers for your support over the last 100 posts.  I hope you enjoy the next 100.

Link to Sock Giveaway

Head over to:
http://librarianwithsecrets.blogspot.co.nz/2012/04/guest-post-by-my-mum-sock-knitting.html
for some cool (actually they look really warm) hand-knitted socks, and a giveaway.