Stale blogs, and what might be Broken

     I don’t watch a lot of TV anymore. I used to.  I can still remember some of the plots from my favorite shows.

            The Captain and crew are faced with a hostile enemy, and the captain defeats them singlehanded… in a fist-fight.

            The flippant army surgeon’s attitude gets him in severe trouble with superiors, and his miraculous medical skills get him right back out.

            Or how about this one:

            They almost get off the island this time, but one knuckleheaded cast member botches it.

            Even the best writers might run out of something to say once in a while and have to resort to a tired but true formula to appease the network execs, sponsors, and hopefully the fans if possible.

     I am not the best writer, I am an amateur writer. And I don’t have execs or sponsors either. I have regular readers, but I am fans them.

     But I do, once in a while, run out of things to say for this weekly blog. When that happens, I might consult my notebook of ideas that I carry with me most days. I also might scrape around the barrel of memories with a spatula and see if I can find anything to share my musings over.

     I started Roadwalker blog almost 3 years ago. The first few weeks I wrote almost every day. I wrote about myself, memories that were on my mind and generally tried to paint a picture of who I was. I finally fell into a weekly schedule. But my topics were still Navel Gazing.

It wasn’t until about 9 months of blogging that Prajna encouraged me to make my blog more topical. She told me to write about what God was doing in my life at that time. So I started trying to write about what I was thinking about that week. That is when I think I found the voice of my blog. That’s when I started to really like what I wrote most of the time.

But I often see the same formula in a lot of my blog posts. I was messed up, then praise the Lord, I started to get better. I’m not there yet, but I’m on the mend and on my way and I hope everyone is encouraged by this.

Nice, but growing old. I feel like my blog is getting a little stale. And I wouldn’t be just filling up this entry to reflect on this without trying to make some sense of it.

I think my life lately has been a little stale. Now, don’t anyone get me wrong, my life has not been bad or even boring. I’ve been busy at work, read and listened to some good books, got a new puppy and been amazed at my second Celebrate Recovery step study.

But something is still lacking I think. I haven’t stepped out much or taken a lot of risk. The biggest thing I did lately was fit an extraordinary number of tables and chairs into an assembly room at church. I even blogged about it.

But if my blog is getting stale then maybe I need some new inspiration. And at the mere thought of that, I want to go take a nap. Getting inspired might mean trying something new or getting out and meeting people. I don’t know if my writing is worth me going out on a limb like that.

For now, I want to start writing a new story. I have an opening of a story idea that I want to start this week. I don’t know where the story will go and just want to write the opening scenes that I’ve imagined and see if anything comes after. That’s a start, right?

I don’t know how much that will help my weekly blog. I remind myself that this blog is a writing exercise. It compels me to write at least once a week, and it gives me something to think about over the days. I try to look for things to write about all week. Sometimes it’s profound, sometimes not. Starting a new story might sharpen my writing skills, but I don’t know if it will aid in inspiration.

I should get out more, not just grocery shopping. If my truck worked I could go for a road trip. Is it wrong to blame a broken rear-end for a stale blog?

Maybe it is. One might think that a father of five would never lack for inspiration. Maybe I just need to open my eyes more. But something tells me that all I really need to broaden my horizons and be more inspired is get my rear in gear.