I sat cross-legged on my bed, staring into space with a slight frown. Something was bugging me lately whenever I thought about work…
Why was there a blank space where my love of creating content used to be?
I’d told myself for months that I was just overwhelmed by everyone else’s projects, frustrated with being so behind on our own work.
But the question in my mind was swallowed up with a whoosh, disappearing into… nothingness.
I just… didn’t care anymore.
And that not caring appeared bigger than I was comfortable feeling.
I squinted into the blackness, teetering on the edge of being mesmerized by it as more questions whirled into the void, before taking a step back.
I recognized the chasm of hopelessness.
It had sucked me into its depths too many times over the years until I finally learned to recognize the game before it played me.
This game always starts in the background – the subconscious, where beliefs live.
Some of the popular moves include questions like “what if…” and “what’s wrong with me?” as well as doom-and-gloom proclamations hinging on “always” and “never”.
They ninja their way to the forefront of your mind, wearing masks of wisdom and personality: “These things are important to consider…” “This is just me, I can’t ignore myself…” making it feel impossible not to engage.
And that’s when the suffocation begins…
Because hollow questions have no good answers.
And lies that ring true refuse to be drowned out.
evil. can. not. be. reasoned. with.
Darkness can only be overcome by light.
Voids can only be fully filled by love.
Blah, blah… we “know” this.
But I would wager our experiences tip the scale more heavily to darkness – if not for us personally, then based on what we’ve observed in others’ struggles…
And so we wrestle to reconcile the “right” answers against the realities we encounter.
In 2015 I’d finally had it trying to make sense of this juxtaposition. I was weary of making excuses for why God didn’t seem to come through and of too often needing to twist “goodness” to mean something we’d only understand “when we get to heaven someday”.
I refused to stay in the mindset that I just wasn’t “submitted” or humble enough to accept not understanding, and grew zealous in my quest for real answers.
Blue Letter Bible and Olive Tree Bible tools and concordances became my breakfast, lunch, dinner, and midnight snack… every spare moment filled with all the teachings I could seek out that had better explanations than the trite ones I grew up on.
To my amazement, there was so. much. more. good news than I could have dreamed. The Bible became vivid with layers upon layers of meaning.
I was invigorated by new perspective…
Yet here I was on my bed, 2+ years into my quest, feeling arguably more disconnected than I had at the start.
And then it hit me – coming out on the other side of this journey I was a different person. (duh)
As an internal processor, I’d become accustomed to being quiet for 29 long months – the answers I was apprehending still growing in my heart.
I wasn’t even sure how to relate to the world anymore as my old self, let alone the person I was in the process of evolving into.
Suspended in limbo between these 2 versions of myself, I was reminded of the moment in 2011 that I decided to stop caring what anyone else might think, and just create what I wanted to create, however messy it might come out…
The only agenda I had was exploration – finding myself again, as distinct from the wife and mother I’d become since 2004.
I was astonished at the freedom I experienced in starting our blog back up, making 30 not only better than I could have hoped, but literally my best year to date.
Remembering, I yearned to get back to that, but as I considered my outlet in this site, it dawned on me that I now viewed it as a burden.
Beginning 2015, the site was in a good place and growing, so we made the decision to give it a go full time. When my attention and priorities shifted only several months in, however, I quickly lost my way.
I started going through the motions, floundering around without a clear vision because my heart just wasn’t in it.
David was frustrated. I was frustrated. Our income was precarious…
But we continued to soldier on, attempting to find the “right” way to do the “right” things… and we did make progress in refining that, but it still felt forced overall.
As I reflected, I realized I’d slipped into trying to fit the mold of what our traffic said people wanted, and what bloggers “should” do… and it had bankrupted me creatively!
“Should” is a branch of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil – there is no Life there.
This post is the beginning of me finding myself again – the new me with a different perspective… apart from expectations and “best blogging practices”.
It won’t necessarily be a matter of blending up my heart and pouring it all over the proverbial page, but we are shifting into a new gear.
Why the heck you would care?
I can promise our main goal is still creating value for anyone visiting our little corner of the web. We’re just approaching it from a more refined, inspired perspective. That means we’re excited to get back to creating much more regularly, and we’ve had a million ideas cooking for a long time now!
I know this post was fairly personal, but maybe you can identify with the journey I’ve been on…?
- The hopelessness and depression I’ve lived in at various stages in my life ultimately stemmed from questions that didn’t seem to have good answers.
- Be encouraged – the answers you need are out there.
- Evolving is dang uncomfortable!
- Take the time to get to know yourself again in each stage.
- You don’t owe the world what it thinks you should be.
- You are a creator in some way, shape, or form, and we all lose when the real you is buried under layers of “shoulds”.