Connect

Have you ever found a hobby that you really enjoyed, and so for a while you go all in and you enjoy it simply because you lose yourself (or perhaps find yourself) in the hobby? Then there comes a time where you realize that other people enjoy the same hobby... and you start to realize other people are better at it than you. Comparison. Eventually, the comparison eats you up and sadly, you end up not enjoying what you loved in the first place because you are more concerned with being good at it rather than just finding yourself, or losing yourself in it.

That is the place I have come to with this blog. So many times in the last few weeks I have thought that I just want to quit. I want to stop writing.... because, of course, in my mind I want to be a brilliant writer like Donald Miller, Ann Voskamp, or Brennan Manning... and then I read back through my writing ...and the disappointment sets in because I realize I'm not a brilliant writer, I'm just Sheila. Kind of like those American Idol contestants who think they sound like Mariah Carey and then they see the replay and they hear themselves for the first time and they think, oh.. yikes.

I was sharing this frustration with my sister, who is also a blogger, and a few friends. Of course they were good to encourage me and to remind me that we are our biggest critique, but they also asked me some hard questions: why do you love to write? Why do you feel like you need to be good at writing in order to love it? Why can't you love it, even if it is just for yourself?

And so I sit here, contemplating those questions... and I don't think I have answers to all of them yet, but what I do know this:

I write because words and ideas connect people -they link us together -they bridge the gap. They challenge, inspire, and make us feel known... Life has it's ups and downs. There are times to laugh and love and other times to hurt and cry -words connect us to each other and through each other's experiences. So I write about the good and the bad, the dorky and corky, the love and the hate because I love to connect. We all live very different lives, but we feel the same pulse of life
{together}. We long to say, you feel that way too, you are going through that too, I thought I was alone. and we can't say that unless we use words to get us to that scary, vulnerable, leaning into the air kind of connection.

So I guess that is why I'm here, I throw comparison aside and I focus in on the one thing that keeps me writing

connection.