Sunday, November 28, 2004
Mark Shea takes a break
I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.
But for all that, there is one thing I do know: There's not enough hours in the day to conduct this blog as well as care for family, do my work, and most especially at present, finish a book that my conscience has been bothering me about for quite some time.
So after much thought and prayer, I have decided to suspend this blog till that project is well and truly done. I don't know how long that will take, but I firmly believe it is what the Holy Spirit has been bugging me to do for some time and I have been avoiding doing.
My reasons for avoiding it are not especially noble. Cranky as I can be here, I value the companionship of my readers. The life of a writer consists of sitting in a room by oneself. For an extrovert like me, that's solitary confinement and a lonesome business. The blog has been a way to avoid that to a degree and I've been loath to give it up.
Also, as an earthbound materialist whose trust in God is as riddled with concupiscence as anybody's, I've dreaded the thought of putting the blog on Indefinite Pause because, frankly, we don't have a lot of dough and I was about to start a fund drive to cover college, Christmas, dental bills and the thousand natural shocks flesh is heir to. The problem with that Money Trap is that there's no escape if I start putting Mammon First. If I do the fund drive and then stop the blog, people will feel gypped ("Hey! He takes our money and they stops writing!").
And I *must* stop the blog till the book is done. Try as I might, there's just no other way. Writing's a zero sum game. Time spent here is time taken from there.
So: effective immediately CAEI is going on suspension till my book is finished. When it's done (no telling when) I will resume the blog and be back to my old tricks.
The outpouring is touching.
Hey. If I were to go away for a while, would you guys do the same for me? <bats very long eyelashes>
But for all that, there is one thing I do know: There's not enough hours in the day to conduct this blog as well as care for family, do my work, and most especially at present, finish a book that my conscience has been bothering me about for quite some time.
So after much thought and prayer, I have decided to suspend this blog till that project is well and truly done. I don't know how long that will take, but I firmly believe it is what the Holy Spirit has been bugging me to do for some time and I have been avoiding doing.
My reasons for avoiding it are not especially noble. Cranky as I can be here, I value the companionship of my readers. The life of a writer consists of sitting in a room by oneself. For an extrovert like me, that's solitary confinement and a lonesome business. The blog has been a way to avoid that to a degree and I've been loath to give it up.
Also, as an earthbound materialist whose trust in God is as riddled with concupiscence as anybody's, I've dreaded the thought of putting the blog on Indefinite Pause because, frankly, we don't have a lot of dough and I was about to start a fund drive to cover college, Christmas, dental bills and the thousand natural shocks flesh is heir to. The problem with that Money Trap is that there's no escape if I start putting Mammon First. If I do the fund drive and then stop the blog, people will feel gypped ("Hey! He takes our money and they stops writing!").
And I *must* stop the blog till the book is done. Try as I might, there's just no other way. Writing's a zero sum game. Time spent here is time taken from there.
So: effective immediately CAEI is going on suspension till my book is finished. When it's done (no telling when) I will resume the blog and be back to my old tricks.
The outpouring is touching.
Hey. If I were to go away for a while, would you guys do the same for me? <bats very long eyelashes>
