Motivation

This post is a struggle over how much of your time I’m willing to waste just talking about my own issues and my desire to talk. Maybe it will connect with something in you that will help you understand or help you help me, but that is not my motivation and that is my problem right now: motivation.

I just started reading New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton, which on top of what I already know and other sources of self-reflection has pretty much stripped me bare. I still have not had the time to figure out if I have anything left. An analogy to help explain: I’m like a person who is so convinced that using a gas powered car is wrong that he will no longer use one but that does not have an alternate power source, so he is just stuck in one place.

I probably cannot even number the desires inside of me that I have (correctly, I think) labeled as wrong at this point. But I still need to find some that I can label as good and right. Thomas Merton illustrated well the ways that so-called “holy” people can be self-deceived about their own goodness and turn it into something that is wrong. Realistically I think Merton has made me lose faith in myself before I am ready to fully put my faith in God.

As a result I do not think any of my normal rants is appropriate to be sharing with other people and trying to convince them of. I am not sure if I will have anything of substance in the near future, but I do not want to abandon this because I am trying really hard to build into myself integrity and perseverance (I am pretty sure those are good) and ditching this would be counterproductive for those goals.

Ok, enough about me, a little about what I do know about this blog. My plan is to limit myself to 500 words or less for the near future. That will mean more focused posts which are also short enough to edit, rewrite, or basically completely scrap (this is an example of the result of the third, then the first). I know I have not been living up to my writing abilities in college, so I will hold this limit until I am convinced I am starting to live up to them, then I will slowly expand the limit.

Next week I will probably attempt to start a series on the reasons for my faith. I have a sort of ‘bedrock faith’ I can fall back on in times of serious doubt, but I do not think I know it enough, and this seems a good place to develop it (so it can be challenged or strengthened publicly). Time will tell if I can put something together fast enough, though. And I apologize for the immensely personal post, but it seemed the only appropriate thing to do.