sometimes, i think i’m really smart. i did well in school, i use polysyllabic words, (i can spell polysyllabic), and know not to put metal things in the microwave.
sometimes though, i’m not smart. these moments usually involve two things.
1) choice of shoes (i.e., wearing high heels to run around large arenas for conferences)
2) directions, maps, roads, streets, or anything involving a “point a” and a “point b”
following a tragic day of wearing very high heels, in attempt to check into my hotel and change shoes before the evening events of the first day of catalyst, i fell victim to the street naming system of atlanta.
everything is peachtree road.
for example, my GPS directions to find my hotel included:
Go NW on Peachtree Rd NW
Take a slight left on Peachtree Rd
Turn left at Peachtree Ind Rd
Make an immediate right on NW Peachtree Rd*
after driving around in traffic for an hour and a half, i finally found my hotel, quickly changed my shoes, and at unheavenly rates of speed drove back to gwinnett for the deadly viper session.
arriving a few minutes late, my catalyst friend ben and i managed to find a two empty seats in the very middle, very upper, very back, very highest possible spot. during some of the transition times, we conversed on some catalyst things, some blogging things, some life things, and then he asked the money question:
“have you ever thought of shutting your blog down?”
i might as well have kept my high heels on, because it would have felt much more comfortable for him to have taken one of them off and then punch me repeatedly in my eye than for him to have asked me that question.
there was no good answer. i had thought about shutting my blog down once, but it lasted approximately .0002 seconds.
what would happen if i shut down my blog?
that question has been in my head for the last few days.
i imagined doing it. shutting it down, deleting my facebook account, my twitter account, then disappearing altogether from social networkland.
and after i recovered from hyperventilating, i pushed the thought out of my mind.
far out of my mind.
because there are many good reasons not to stop blogging – the community and the influence and change that this community has brought to issues of poverty and justice and faith.
but there is one reason my social media butterfly self couldn’t vanish.
and i wish i could say it’s valuable or worthwhile or noble. i couldn’t because if i did, i wouldn’t know what to do anymore.
i couldn’t…be.
i wouldn’t know who i am.
and i realize this is all my flawed thinking. my insecurity. my need for affirmation and worth and, dare i say, even attention?
it’s not pretty.
i’m not shutting down my blog. but wow, has that question challenged my motives.
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*disclosure: GPS directions are represented with slight literary exaggeration
