Hello everyone,
I know I promised that I would be back to blogging as usual in something of a short order. As it is now readily apparent, I have not exactly made that transition back into the digital world as smoothly as I ought to have made it. Nonetheless, here is my official return to the online world!
At the same time, I must also report to you that this is also my "goodbye" to the online world as well. In fact, this is a hello and a goodbye all in one. This may come as a shock to some of you, and really, there are some quite radical changes being made on my end, but they may or may not seem radical to you on your end. Feel free to think as you may.
First things first, let me recount my Christmas holiday for you all, in case you missed it.
My time in St. Louis was really a wonderful visit, with plenty of things happening. At the same time, it was terribly trying. I was able to meet a great deal more of my family with whom I do not usually have the pleasure of talking, but whenever I am put before a great multitude of people, sometimes it can try my soul in ways that some may not expect. I am going ahead of myself, though, so let me continue. The Christmas event itself was actually divided into two factions, since some people were likely to not be able to make certain dates, and others were unlikely to make others. So on Christmas Eve we actually had a small event of opening presents and eating with the family. It was really a lot of fun. Then, on Christmas day most of the other members of the family showed up and we had more presents and food.
I spent the bulk of my time with my cousins, and went about doing this and that. It is funny as I often feel as though I am being pulled in all directions by them, where some want me to do something here, and another wants me over there, and another here, and another and another. :-) Overall though, it is usually nice to feel needed. Sometimes, however, being needed too much causes a lot of drain on a person, which brings me back to my other topic.
While I was in St. Louis with all my cousins and everyone, I really did feel drained. You see, when you are "wanted" by so many people, and you actually try to make a hard effort to serve all of them (whether or not I did that well or not is another story), it usually ends up that you feel like you are doing all the giving, and no one else is giving back to you. I am sure that was not the case, but I am often predisposed to melodrama. :-)
But I do not feel it is appropriate to go on selfishly blabbing about how I feel unappreciated and whatnot by my family and/or the majority of everyone else. I am sure all of you have been through some point like that in your life, and I tend to go through those spurts of depressed type moods plenty often; it is nothing special. Instead, how about we focus on the solution? God has faithfully helped me in dealing with a lot of this, and no doubt will help me in the future. I have every belief that he has carried me through many times when I felt as though I had not a friend in the world (in fact, there were/are plenty of those times when I really did/do not have any strong real-life friends). Nonetheless, there is a need in everyone, I think, to interact and feed from other people as well. I have realized, that I have not been doing so in the right way. This is why I shall be saying goodbye to most of you online. In fact, I am actually being rather mean, and I know it. If some of you thought I was a recluse now, you will find myself even more reclusive now. The only difference is that I hope to use this reclusiveness in the online world to open up to the "real life" world.
You see, I have come to the realization of how much of a crux my online life really is. I have been drowning myself in such a world for far too long, and I have desparately tried to gain some sort of satisfaction from online relationships when I really should have been reaching out and working with people in real life.
There is nothing wrong with online life, and I have been the happy recipient of wonderful things from interacting online with people. The unfortunate truth, however, is that I have not been able to properly control myself in the way I looked at things. This impels me to make the decisionto completely recede from the internet "social community." In effect, this means that I will no longer be blogging, I will not be reading other people's Blogs as a habit, but only as an extension to other forms of communication, and I will no longer be making the brunt of my communication over the internet. I will continue to use my main website as a repository to store essays, research, and other forms of information. Sacrificum Deo will return as my main form of "consistent, daily updates" regarding where I am in my life. The only thing I will really be doing that continues with an online presence is that I now intend to have daily devotions, and post my devotional notes to the mailing lists on the Sacrificum Deo site. Other than this, I am going to be largely out of touch with the online world.
This in no way implies that I wish to neglect any of my recently developed relationships with many of you, but I find that I am at a crossroads. For some of you, this will little affect you, as we have consistent and well founded correspondence outside of my blogging world. For others of you, blogging is your only contact into my world. It is you who I imagine will find a difference.
I know that this could present problems for some of you who may wish to continue correspondence with me. In fact, I really am sorry, and I realize that I am being really mean with all this stuff, I am not really giving you all much of a way or chance to get to know me better or to even work or communicate, but I feel it has to be done, sorry. Pretty much the only forms of communication will most likely now be Instant Messaging, Email, phone calls, and (my preferred method) letters. As you can tell, this could easily be a problem for some of you, particularly the female bunch. I know many of you choose not to engage in such correspondence, which has a distinctly one on one type of feel. I really have no solution for this at the moment. While I cannot say how long my sebaticle from blogging will be, I intend to hold out as long as it takes for me to fix my issues. At the moment, this looks like at least until near the end of this coming year.
My intention in doing this is to begin cultivating real, personal relationships with people outside of the internet. While I have absolutely no intention of dropping out on my long distance friends, I need to get into the real world and start interacting with it. I intend to begin reliably attending a church of good people.
I do not feel I am explaining all the details or even the main point quite as well as I had hoped, but the end result is the same, whether or not the reasons are explained quite as well as I want.
I have a few basic goals for this coming year: to interact with people in real life more, and to actually get out there; to really make a stronger all in effort at study and research; to continue my education; to help out my family; to increase my financial stability; to finish writing at least one of my novels. As you can see, the internet directly conflicts with one of these goals, and it is really time I cannot spend. I waste my time too much, and I must work on not wasting my time.
My mind has really gone blank otherwise tonight, and I have little else that I can say at the moment. I do not think I shall find anything else to say even if I stayed and tried. I really just wanted to break the news to all of you right now, and I may or may not be able to expound upon my decision a little later. For now, if this is my last blog post, at least you all know why. Actually, if this is my last blog post, this is rather sad, as I know that there are so many other things I want to say. Oh well, I'll have to leave it at this.
My Opera
