A "2 Years Later" Youth Ministry Check-In

I’ve been volunteering in youth ministry at Holy Family for two full years and this is the start of Year 3. If I look at the immediate lens of my life as a whole, two years feel like a really long time. And in some respects, I feel like I’ve been serving in youth ministry forever, even though I haven’t. (As a tangent, if you want someone who’s actually been in youth ministry for seemingly forever, at least from my perspective, look up “Mardesich, Christopher”). I’ve met a lot of different people, some from different parishes, some of whom I’ve only met once in my lifetime (and still have only met once in my lifetime), and some of whom have definitely become friends of mine. My time in youth ministry has definitely given me a lot to reflect on, some of which I’ll touch upon.

For those who don’t know, before I started serving as a Youth Ministry volunteer, I had never been involved in any parish youth ministry program, not as a teen nor as a volunteer. I had no idea when I started if this was going to be a long-term thing. It was through a random conversation (not-so-random in hindsight) in SCU’s Campus Ministry office where I originally heard from a friend that Holy Family was searching for Youth Ministry volunteers. During this conversation, I explained how I wanted to continue in spiritual leadership after my graduation and had thought of youth ministry as a way to continue that. Since my parents were part of the Simbang Gabi choir at Holy Family, I had known they had an established youth ministry program. With no prior experience in youth ministry, I ideally wanted to start somewhere that had an established program. It worked out, and here I am two years later, still volunteering in youth ministry.

Well, let me amend that last statement. I’m not just “still volunteering” in youth ministry; I’ve become passionate about it, a lot of it thanks to an in-depth conversation I had with a couple of good friends the end of my LA Congress experience. I’m always trying to come up with new ideas for how to best minister to the teens I work with. Whether that is ideas for future meetings, thinking of how to engage the parents I meet in the 15-30 seconds I have with, or trying to think of ideas to improve the ministry, my brain feels like it’s always moving when it comes to youth ministry. Admittedly that passion is a double-edged sword sometimes. When I feel there’s something that really needs to be improved in youth ministry, I get frustrated inside very easily, which isn’t the healthiest for me. And sometimes that passion gets in the way of giving new ideas (that I didn’t think of) a chance at first. I feel controlling that passion will come with time and overall I find it fulfilling that I have this passion for youth ministry.

Now moving on to the teens themselves, they’re an interesting bunch. There are definitely Sundays where they drive me crazy (usually from having a small group I fail to control) and I’m like, “Uhhh….” at the end. There are moments where a teen, usually in complete innocence, says something or makes a joke that is completely offensive and I’m standing there with a blank face not sure how to respond. And there are other things from working with teens that leave me either drained or flabbergasted. But despite that, I absolutely love them. They bring a lot of energy to the table. Talking with them, doing activities with them, and overall seeing them is sometimes the highlight of my weekend.

If there’s one component of youth ministry I really love, it’s relational ministry, ministering to the teens by creating relationships with them. I enjoy checking in on them, asking them about their weeks, and listening to them talk about their lives. I love learning what they love, which helps me understand them a little better. This component of ministry allows me to be looser and allows me to be most present with where the teens are at. Connecting with teens is one of the primary reasons I keep coming back every Sunday. To provide a short example, when I told one of my teens last Sunday that I wasn’t going to be at Holy Family today, they responded, “Noooo…” and gave me a hug before I said good-bye for the night. Moments like that make me realize that at least some of the teens really appreciate me, even if I may not be able to recognize it at times. In that moment, I saw God’s love come alive through someone 10 years younger than me. Moments like that are why I’m grateful to be involved in this ministry and have the opportunity to serve the specific teens I serve.

I could write more but I’ll call it a wrap right for now. I’m glad I had this break from youth ministry to take a step back and reflect on my time volunteering in it. This time next Sunday, I’ll be ready and roaring to go to minister to the teens once again.

A small sampling of some of the teens I've gotten to be with through Youth Ministry.

Blogging Motivation Struggles

I’ve had this blog going for over 18 months now, or some amount of time like that. It’s served many different purposes. For me, it has often served as a healthy method to let my thoughts out and to reflect upon something that’s been on my mind for a while. I’ve had others tell me that they get something out of reading my blog posts, which is really nice. This post will focus more on what gets me to blog, or more like what doesn’t get me to blog even when I have something on my mind.

Not only do I blog on occasion, I very much enjoy reading my friends’ blogs as well. Many of them have had blogs, or have blogged before, whether they be personal blogs or ones set up for something like study abroad or whatnot. As a reader, there’s a lot I gain from reading about my friends’ experiences in that type of form. It allows me to keep up with those I haven’t been in contact with but I also learn things myself from reading about their experiences. Combined, reading my friends’ blogs when I can allow me to gain a lot from the effort they put in to talk about their lives and experiences.

I’ve had multiple occasions where I've struggled to find the motivation to sit down and blog while I've had this going. Like times where I’ve had something on my mind, but then stopped myself from blogging or didn’t make the time to sit down and blog. To be perfectly honest, one of the reasons I struggle with finding motivation to sit down to blog is this: self-consciousness. If you were to ask me, chances are I’d tell you my life doesn’t feel that interesting. I mean I work full-time, I do a little volunteering, and…yeah. I’m not living in a giant, major tourist city or in a whole different culture or anything like that. So the question I often ask myself internally is this: “What do I really have to share?” That’s happened to me before where I think about writing something and stop myself because I don’t feel like people will get very much out of it or even think others would find it that interesting. I mean of course my own experience is my own unique experience, but that whole self-comparison thing gets in the way and makes it feel like I don’t really have much to blog about and share relative to a lot of my other friends.

I try to battle those perceptions because I know the notion that “I having nothing to share” isn’t true. I’ve had experiences when I’ve blogged before and people either enjoyed it or really needed to read what I wrote. In addition, blogging has been self-therapeutic for me on multiple occasions.

My ultimate goal when I blog is this: “If one person gets something out of my blogging, then it’s absolutely worth it.” I do genuinely hope that what I write can have a positive impact on at least one person. Sometimes it’s just difficult to see and know that I did positively affect that “one person” through my blog posting and sometimes, I lose sight of that goal and think that I need to have multiple people like it or think what matters is the number of people that read.

I’ve wanted to get this out in the open for a while so I feel better that I made the time to write this. Though it’s worth noting that being on a 4 hour flight makes it easier to find that time ;) .

Intention and Intentionality

Thursday night, I spent a short time talking on the phone with a dear friend, catching up after a few months. Towards the end of our conversation, my friend had told me that they wanted to be more intentional about something and do a better job of it. When I heard her use the word “intentional” in that personal context, it triggered a question from me that I had thought about for a while. I asked my friend something along the lines of, “Do we use the word ‘intentionality’ because of the people we associated with and hung out with at Santa Clara or is it more widespread?”

Growing up, the term “intention” had two things I associated with it. One referred to the “intentions” that would be offered at Mass during the Prayers of the Faithful. I would typically think of offering intentions as, “We pray for ________. Lord, Hear our prayer”, and that’s the only context I would ever think of the word “intention” as a noun. The other association would be as an adverb as another way of saying “doing something on purpose”. For example, I intentionally didn’t talk about my friend’s birthday with them until afterwards because I didn’t want to spoil the surprise another person was putting together for them. Or as a joke, I once stole one of my mentor’s rubber ducks one time and intentionally placed it under my friend’s jacket so she would be caught and “fired” instead of me. ;)

Back to the question I asked my friend Thursday night, I’m starting to realize that it’s only been in the past 1-2 years that I started hearing and noticing the word intentionality or the terminology of “being intentional” about doing something. She concluded that we’ve seen and heard it based more on the people we hung out with. I’ve also realized that I’ve heard this word “intentionality” get tossed around a lot from people I know and seeing people, including myself, get asked, “what is your intention” (referring to an action you will commit yourself to doing). A lot of my friends who have talked about intentionality or being intentional have spent time being active in programs like Campus Ministry, Jesuit Volunteer Corps (JVC), Landmark Forum, or other similar-type awesome programs that have helped make them better people. That being said, the word “intentionality” has achieved buzzword status in Joe world where sometimes, I admittedly instinctively associate the use of the term intention/intentionality in that context with involvement in those types of programs instead of actually what is actually meant by acting with intention or intentionality.

This leads me to the next question I’ve been asking myself: what the heck does “being intentional about something” or “intentionality” even mean? When I asked another friend how being friends with me has changed them for the better, they said that I’ve been “very intentional” about our friendship. There’s that word again. If I were to give you an answer off the top of my head, I would tell you that being intentional about something means being driven by a purpose to act upon that “something” and not doing “something” for the sake of doing “something”. Intentionality would be the term to describe the action of being driven by that purpose. If I look at what that friend told me and reflect upon it a little further, I can see where I’ve embodied this notion of “intentionality” in friendships and relationships especially over the past year.

I’ve told people over the past year as I’ve become more deliberate about how I approach my friendships. Now that I’ve spent a year in the “post-grad” phase of life where my friends aren’t primarily within a 1-mile radius, I’ve noticed a shift in how I approach people now that my available time to spend with people is more limited. When I send one of my typical random Joe messages saying hi, that’s my way of saying, “I care about your life and am curious how you’re doing”. I’ve tried finding pockets of time to answer texts or to figure out who I haven’t talked to in a while. When I do find those times to catch up, I do my best to genuinely listen to how everything is going and to catch up on their life as much as possible. I acknowledge that ultimately it’s up to me to do everything on my end to grow those friendships even as physical distance and “different phase of life” makes it harder to catch up with people and keep in touch. At the same time, I try to find a balance between how to space out my reaching out. I’m super self-conscious about being that friend that’s a huge nagger and doesn’t give others space, or always sends messages to the point where it gets really annoying. I know that other people’s lives are, well, really busy and my purpose in keeping those relationships strong is to give them the space to handle their own stuff and then let them find the time when they can. If I try to make sense of what my friend meant by me being “more intentional” about friendship, that might be it.

At the same time, I think me being intentional about my relationships means recognizing that others have very different meanings and ways of being intentional and acting upon their intentions with a purpose. One of the ways I’ve had to learn this is through how people make the most their time with others. Despite what my 30/30 Myers-Briggs test score for extroversion may imply, I have a strong preference to spend time with people in smaller groups, like 2 or 3 at a time, instead of larger groups of friends. Of course I want to surround myself with people I love because that’s how I gain energy, but to tell you the truth, I’m most comfortable when I’m able to focus on one or two people at a time and give them my full attention rather than giving bits and pieces to 5 or more people in the same area. I’ve had moments this year where I’ve had to learn the hard way to equally respect others’ preferences in that regard. There was a period of time within the past year where I took a hard stance on not wanting to be in groups out of fear of feeling super uncomfortable and left out within a larger group. There were times where this caused a clash when I had friends come and want to get people (including me) in larger groups and I wanted none of being in a large group. That latter part was the hardest because in my head, it felt like I wasn’t making the most of that time with them and I wasn’t enjoying it like I should. But when it comes down to it, I believe that friends wanting to be in a large group is one way for them to be intentional about their friendships and the people that matter. It’s another way of being intentional, which isn’t my way of doing so, but it’s just as equally valid and fulfilling for them. If I’m truly going to be intentional about my friendships and caring for those relationships, it’s just as much on me to let them be intentional in their own ways as I am intentional in my own way. I’ve been trying in the past months to be a lot more open-minded to spending time in groups, especially when someone else initiates it and it’s “their thing” so to speak. Or having a friend visit one weekend, openly indicate that they’re trying to see as many people as possible, and to acknowledge that while making the most of the 10-minute walk I had with them one-on-one. I didn’t press for more time knowing that, but I felt fulfilled knowing that they made that little spot of time for me completely spontaneously.

Ultimately in the context I just talked about, I feel having an intention and being intentionality comes down to having a purpose. My purpose is to maintain and grow the friendships I have in the best way possible. The best way possible, I think, involves knowing my own strengths and preferences, while at the same time respecting and accepting the strengths and preferences for others in how they approach their friendships. Living an intentional life is definitely a noble goal to achieve, one that is driven by some sort of purpose. Do I know what fully “living an intentional life” means for me? Not really. But what I do know is that I do my best to be intentional and driven by a purpose to make the most out of friendships and relationships. I can figure out what other elements of an intentional, purpose-driven, life means for me as I go on.

As buzz-wordy as “intentionality” can be for me sometimes, it is indeed a word that can pack a lot of punch and meaning if I let it.

Finding Dory

I think we can all agree that Pixar has released a lot of really good movies. Finding Nemo falls into this category and certainly has a number of famous clips. I watched it a long time ago as a kid and remember loving the movie. While I haven’t watched the movie start to finish in a long while (and huge disclaimer: I know I need to and want to watch the whole movie start-to-finish again), I recently started re-discovering some of the funniest clips from the movie and started watching them again.

As anyone who has watched Finding Nemo knows, Dory is one of the movie’s main characters and is very notable as a result. For those who haven’t watched it, Dory is this lovable blue fish who’s super optimistic, upbeat, and also rather air-headed at times. From speaking whale to trying to befriend a little jellyfish, Dory’s one of those characters that serves as the optimistic and “look on the bright side” foil to the constantly pessimistic Marlin. In other words, Dory is quite the entertaining character.

One of Dory’s most famous moments in the film is the point where she in Marlin have a diving mask which helps in the quest to find Nemo. Dory then drops the mask and Marlin gets down and depressed feeling like he lost his chance to find his son. She then approaches the downtrodden Marlin and then the following exchange occurs:

“Hey Mr. Grumpy Gills…when life gets you down, you know what you gotta do?” (Marlin: “I don’t wanna know what you gotta do.”)

“Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming. What do we do? We swim….swim” (Marlin: “Dory, no singing.”)

A couple of months ago, I re-discovered this clip and started listening to it one Friday at work. Having consumed a Grande Starbucks Coffee that morning, I was feeling the caffeine rush and started listening to the clip over and over again. What can I say? It’s a great clip! During that morning, I came up with this idea to greet some of my friends and send them a nice little message based off Dory’s “just keep swimming” mantra. I spent a good chunk of that day messaging some of my friends trying to encourage them to “just keep swimming” if life was getting them down. At the time, I didn’t think it would be that much aside from a typical Joe somewhat funny well-wish. But based on how people responded, it seems like it was more than that.

A lot of them of course loved the Finding Nemo reference. Moreso than that, I found that a number of my friends had told me that my encouragement to “just keep swimming” came at the absolute right time. Some happily and affirmatively told me that they were swimming, which made me happy. Some of them told me they were having a rough day and really needed that motivation. One had shared a story with me about how seeing “just keep swimming” was absolutely fitting in so many ways. Something tells me that encouraging people to just keep swimming really did a lot for so many people.

When I thought about this more, I started to realize how much I identify with Dory’s character. I felt like this experience was like me finding my “inner Dory”, being eternally optimistic and always looking on the bright side, especially for other people who are maybe having a rough go of it. (I certainly identified with being on the receiving end of Marlin’s “Dory, no singing” response, seeing that I have had many moments where I have started cheerfully singing at seemingly inopportune times.) Being the type of person who could provide that little spark for others and being that reminder to just keep swimming no matter what life throws is something I take pride in. I admit, sometimes I feel like I don’t really grasp how much of an impact my little encouragement can have for other people. I know when people take the time out of their day to encourage me, to say they’re looking forward to seeing me, or something like that, it really does give me a boost to keep swimming, especially when life gets me down. But it certainly feels super positive to know that something as small as happily encouraging someone to “just keep swimming” can give a little laugh and make someone’s day. I feel like, in a way, the character of Dory came alive inside of me.

There have certainly been times where I could really use (or could really have used) Dory’s advice to just keep swimming when life got me down. For example, the month of March for me was, to put it lightly, really bad. Multiple times during the month, I absolutely did not want to do anything and lacked the motivation to be my usual happy-go-lucky, reach out self. I had little desire to approach people with anything and more often than not, found myself more cranky and irritable and not wanting to talk to anyone, preferring to stay on the couch and just almost do nothing. I was in a deep sea of negative emotions and often ended up being really down on myself and filled with a lot of internal frustration. When the calendar turned to April, I was perfectly content to let the month of March burn and throw it in a fire. In hindsight, I was drowning and life was really getting me down. I guess looking back and seeing that I’m in a better place, I did keep swimming…somehow. Maybe even when we feel like we’re drowning, we’re swimming anyway even if we don’t think about it. I don’t know where I would go with that last thought but I’ll toss it out at least.

Today sitting at my work desk, I started thinking. Something that has been an ongoing struggle this entire year has been feeling like I haven’t had as much of an impact on people, especially with my SCU friends that are still there, since I graduated. It’s been more difficult to see those tangible signs that I’m making people’s days and having an impact on their lives. I’m not physically present for many of my friends anymore to share that hug and share that smile that they’ll see and to see their reactions. When I started to become more present with those struggles, I started coming back to this experience of encouraging people to “just keep swimming”. I started remembering how much others got lifted up by having someone tell them to “just keep swimming” when life got them down. And in that little, Finding Nemo-inspired message, I was able to have that impact for others. The subtlety makes the impact harder for me to notice, but in some respects, at least I can notice it. It’s a good reminder for me to realize that even if I may not have the same type of impact I used to when I was physically around lots of my friends as a Santa Clara student, that I still can have that positive impact for those I care about.

Remember…when life gets you down, you know what you gotta do?

Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming…swimming…swimming :)

Rivers and Roads

Looking back on 2014, I see the juxtaposition of two phases of my life. The first 6 months of 2014 comprised the end of my time as a college student. The last 6 months included the start of my time as a working professional. Both phases included a lot of transition. In the first half, I did my best to spend as much time with my fellow graduating seniors as possible; I didn’t know when I would see them again. In the second half, I started a new job, got involved in youth ministry, and started traversing the great unknown of the “not having all your friends within a 1-mile radius” world, among other things. One of the biggest things I was anxious about graduation was how my friendships were going to change when we all went our separate ways. Would going our separate ways weaken my friendships? How was this going to all work out? The thoughts of my already strong friendship dynamics changing scared me because of the fear to the unknown.

A couple of months ago, I was introduced to the song “Rivers and Roads” by the Head in the Heart (and that’s why this post is titled as such). In a lot of ways, the song really gets where I’m at. A lot of my friends moved away after graduation and I have no idea when I’ll see a good number of them again. We’re all walking our separate paths now and yes, I do miss many of their faces like hell. Listening to this song helps bring this topic to mind and helps me reflect upon it.

It’s true; there are rivers and roads that separate me from a lot of my friends. But one of the biggest surprises for me is that the distance hasn’t hurt my friendships. Sure the dynamic has certainly changed, but it hasn’t made my friendships any worse. In fact, it’s like the new dynamic has breathed new life into them. Unlike college, when I was having the same type of experience as my college friends, we’re all having different experiences. But it’s in those different experiences where we bond now and there’s a certain really cool thing about that. I learn so much and am fulfilled by listening to the different experiences my friends have. When I do see them again, I’m more appreciative of any time I have to talk and re-connect. The 15-minute conversations I used to think were “short” are now some of the most fulfilling I can have with them. In addition, just because I may not talk to many of them for weeks or even months on end, when we re-connect, it feels like little time has passed. This point was especially driven down when I hung out with wonderful Bellarmine friends recently and a number of us were like, “It’s been six months? It doesn’t feel like that long.”

On the flip side of things, I’m one of those people who has a lot of friends younger than me who are still at SCU. That has definitely been a struggle at times because as much as I would want them to be able to relate to where I’m at, I’m at a different phase of life when they are. It’s been easy to think my life’s not as interesting as theirs (and self-admitting: I’ve been very prone to that the last few months). My pace of life has slowed down, contrasting the “go go go” lifestyle of college they still are a part of. But at the same time, having the different dynamic has helped some of those friendships and helped spark new friendships as well. Outside of my work schedule and my 2-3 regular commitments per week, my schedule is no longer as full. This has given me the opening to cultivate new friendships with those people I wanted to but couldn’t with my previous commitments and also to deepen already-existing ones. Having the extra added energy to pursue those friendships has been a really cool surprise of post-graduation life and is one I hope to continue to take advantage of in the coming year.

As 2014 draws to a close, I feel more settled in with where I’m at with my friendship dynamics changing and transitioning away from being a college student. Here’s to 2015: to visiting out-of-town friends, getting more involved in youth ministry, new retreat experiences, T-Swift concert, and so much more which is currently unknown =)

The Two-Sided Decision of Empathy

A few weeks ago, my good friend Kate shared a really insightful video on the difference between empathy and sympathy. I’ll link to it here if you’re interested in watching it. It’s only 3 minutes long and brings up a lot of good points. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Evwgu369Jw

The part of the video that struck me the most was how it explained that empathy is a choice and a vulnerable one at that. To empathize with someone requires reaching deep within yourself to find an experience that knows the negative feeling that person is going through. It came to light for me a few weeks ago when in the span of 8 days, I was present to 5 different health-related hazards despite not being directly related to the affected person; I was either in the vicinity when the hazards occurred or someone I’m connected to was related to them. After the 5^th one, I noticed I was actively feeling downbeat the rest of the day after hearing the news. I spent a lot of time thinking about that concept and came to the following conclusion: because I cared for those who were directly affected by the news, I decided I wanted to feel their pain. I cared about them enough that their sadness mattered to me, so I made a conscious decision to feel with them. I wanted to empathize and to connect with their feelings, so I was intentionally downbeat as a result.

Today I was having, to put it lightly, an emotionally crappy morning and it wasn’t even work-related. Things were going haywire in my head. I was freaking out over what turned out to be a whole lot of nothing and there were other things I couldn’t make sense of that morning. Gratuitously enough, one of my best friends responded to a funny story I told them and that simple text helped me start the process of getting out of that emotionally crappy place. My emotional state started to stabilize from that moment and the rest of the day I felt I was going to be okay and slowly but surely felt better about things.

When I was at Santa Clara, it was really obvious to most people when I was having a bad day. I would be lacking the energy and happy-go-lucky attitude that people associate with me. People would see that and ask me what’s wrong. But now that I’m in the workplace where I get a lot of time to myself, none of my friends are going to see me continually shrugging and displaying drained body language. I’m starting to realize that if my friends are going to know that I’m struggling or having a bad day, I’m either going to have to text/message them indicating just that or have them happen to contact me when I’m going through that phase. It turns out during that morning, I told only very few people that I was going emotionally haywire when I was in a place where I would’ve just wanted many more of them to message me and remind me that they’re thinking of me.

Reflecting upon that experience, I’m starting to think there’s a second side to this decision of empathy. I make a decision whether to let people have a choice on whether they want to empathize with me. Many times, I instinctively take away the choice from them. For as seemingly adept as I am with reaching out to people to spend time, it’s ironic that I struggle with reaching out during times when I absolutely need support or need a friend. I make a lot of excuses as to why I sometimes don’t want to let anyone into my dark place. These examples include: “I’m only going to drag down the mood.” “I shouldn’t burden them.” “They’re having fun. I don’t want to ruin it for them.” If I would choose to empathize with the people I love and care about in a heartbeat, shouldn’t I give those same people that care about me the opening to decide whether they want to empathize with me? Shouldn’t I trust them to actively want to feel with me when I’m going emotionally haywire and in a dark place? I know today I had a few friends in mind that I was rather close to telling, “I’m having a bad day and I wanted to let you know” and then proceeded not to because I made various excuses not to tell them.

To be honest, these thoughts leave me with more questions than more clear-cut insights. But if there’s an insight I feel more solid about, it’s this: empathy is a two-sided decision. One side of the empathy decision is the choice I make to connect with someone in their emotionally dark place. The other side of the empathy decision is to decide whether to let others choose whether to empathize with me or not; to let others know, “I’m struggling and I need a friend” and to let them make their own decision whether to empathize with me or not. Through all these questions and unfinished thoughts, I can certainly say the latter is a huge growing edge for me in terms of empathy.

Hail to the Blogmother

It’s been one year since I posted my first entry on this blog. No matter how good or how bad of a blogger I’ve been, it’s not something I could’ve ever imagined myself doing at this time last year. The way I describe it to people, this blog has become my “journaling that I don’t mind sharing with the world”. I could never see myself becoming a professional blogger but to have this as an outlet has definitely been healthy for me. One of the biggest inspirations for starting this blog has been my friend Maira (who I’ve mentioned at least once) and I'd like to share a little more about her.

To tell you a little bit about Maira, she is a lot different from me personality-wise. For example, if there were a picnic table right next to a lake, I would be more inclined to climb on the table and yell at the top of my lungs while Maira would be more likely to stay where she’s at and take in the moment. She is very introspective and always committed to growth. I always feel like I learn something new from our conversations and she is one of the wisest friends I know.

More specific to this post, Maira is one of the biggest inspirations as to why I started a blog in the first place. She has her own blog which I started reading a while back and I always gain something out of her posts. I get really excited every time Maira writes a new post. She has a well-written blog and shares herself in such an authentic way. It is never easy to share oneself in such an open setting, but for Maira to challenge herself and set herself as an example in that way speaks volumes about her. And of course, I’m proud of her for continuing to maintain her blog and post every-so-often.

There’s one post of Maira’s that always keeps me going whenever I’m writing about something and I get stuck. It’s about ego and the concept of writer’s block. Essentially what she writes (which I find to be true) is that our ego keeps us from sharing ourselves because whatever is not “good enough”. I’ve found my ego to be the biggest challenge to blogging. Many times, I think to myself that what I would write isn’t “good enough” or that anyone who chooses to take time to read my writing will find fault with what I write. I can feel awkward sometimes linking my blog posts to Facebook as if I’m trying to shill for readers. I often can think I’m not that interesting of a writer (and for all intents and purposes I may not be). But it takes me away from the biggest reason I started this blog. I share myself in this way in the hope that at least one person is better off for having read my writing. And if it’s only that one person that is better off, then I’ve achieved my major goal. It’s always healthy for me to have a reminder of the true goal of this blog.

After a year, I’m amazed I’m still at this and I’m glad I’ve stuck with it. I choose to blog rather spontaneously. When there’s something on my mind that I feel like I absolutely want to write about, I’m almost going to force myself to make the time to write it all down in a blog post. This blog has served both as a way to share myself and a much-needed form of self-therapy at times. It’s certainly something I plan on keeping for the time being.

Without Maira and the encouragement of many different people, my blog would’ve died and fizzled off a long time ago. And reflecting on it, Maira is one of the biggest reasons why I started blogging and still blog. That being said, it is only fitting that I dedicate this post to her, the one who I affectionately refer to as “the blogmother” from time to time.

And here's the link to Maira's blog post I referred to earlier in this post: http://mtgutierrezblog.blogspot.com/2013/10/lego-and-write.html