Hopes

I’m at an impasse.

I’m writing five hundred words a day, as part of a writing challenge, and I’ve reached what feels like a plateau.

I feel really awful about it, too.

The thing is, it’s making me question what I’m doing, and why I’m doing it.

The thought that started this train of thought (sorry for duplicate words, not editing!) was “if you write it, they will come.”

Well, I’m writing. And nobody’s reading. Nobody cares.

In the end, that’s okay; I’m not trying to write so that I can be loved, or appreciated, or glorified. (Or so I hope. I’m not comfortable with those things, but it’s hard to say from someone else’s perspective what my motivations actually are.)

But when I started this particular site, I did so because I wanted to write from a Christian perspective, and preserve those meager observations I had, in the hopes that someone, somewhere, would benefit from them, and through my efforts, God would be glorified.

(Okay, so maybe glorification was the point — just not my own. Again, such is my hope and my intent. I purposefully don’t use my name here, because I don’t want someone saying “That whatever his name is is a brilliant writer! I sure wish I was as talented as he is!” Likewise, my name not being here also means that nobody can throw toilet paper at my house in pure resentment. Everybody wins.)

But… like I said, nobody’s reading it. I’m not able to market it to increase readership, really (for a few different reasons) – I could, but I’d have to violate various terms of service for the social networking sites to do it well, and something about that rubs me the wrong way. I don’t want to say I’m someone other than who I am; my anonymity, in relation to this site, is precious to me.

So why am I doing it? Why try? The five hundred word challenge has its own merits, but realistically, I’ve been there and done that before; I used to have a job where I had to write at least three pieces a day, every week day, for years.

While I’ve lost the habit of writing on a daily basis (thus, this site having nothing published for seven months), at least I know that I can do it, and it’s just a matter of having a need. (Since I’d done it already, I feel often like I’ve had my exposure already; I don’t need to feel like people are reading me, since I know people did. Like I keep hoping, my goal was glorification of God’s Name, not my own.)

So here I am, plugging away, feeling hopeless in how I write, hoping that somehow, there’s something worthwhile being recorded for posterity. I’m trying to keep God in all of this, and maybe the hope I have in His Name is enough. I guess it will have to be enough.