Blogocentric Formulations

January 2, 2022

"Take up Your Cross"  Prompt ▼

Tell about a time that your faith was tested.

If I'm being completely honest, my faith is tested every single day. Organized religion is not something I grew up with, and although I've intellectually made the decision to follow Christ and become a Christian, there are still regular moments where my inherent doubts, skepticism, and desire for empirical evidence test my faith. There are times when I wonder if I've made the right choice, or if I even really understand what I've committed to. As someone who was raised to be exceedingly responsible and self-reliant, it still feels strange to put myself in a position where I'm deferring to someone else's guidance and wishes, especially someone who I don't feel that I clearly hear from on a regular basis.

It feels like this prompt was maybe more oriented toward a defining moment of faith being tested, but the truth for me is that every day is a test of faith. I haven't had any massive, worldview-shattering moments in my spiritual life; it's been more of a steady, repetitive drip-drip-drip of little tests along the way in my daily life. I've probably failed as many of them as I've passed, if not more. But I still wake up every day trying to remain open to whatever God wants to do with my life and seeing where that takes me.


"Blog City Prompt Forum"  Prompt ▼

Did you make writing goals for 2023? Did you know WDC has a contest in January where you write a letter to yourself discussing your goals past and present?

As a matter of fact, I do know that this site has a contest in January where entrants can write a letter to themselves discussing goals for the coming year. Unfortunately, I haven't been eligible to enter "Dear Me: Official WDC Contest"  in about eight years since I'm responsible for running it. But I wrote an (unofficial) entry last year for the heck of it, and I think I might write one again this year because I think it's a good practice and I need entries for "Twenty-three in Eleven " .

My main writing goal for 2023 is to get back into a regular writing habit. With work and family obligations, writing has taken a serious backseat for me over the past several years, and I really need t get back into the habit. I'd like to have a new script and a new book written by the end of the year, preferably something I'm actually proud of and can nudge further along toward my ultimate goal of actually doing something with it. I'd also like to get back into writing short stories and essays and other things, which is the main reason why I'm pulling blog prompts from a variety of groups. If I don't have anything specific to write on a given day, I'm hoping to at least write a blog entry or two!


"Blogging Circle of Friends Prompt Forum"  Prompt ▼

It's the first Monday in January of 2023, so let's start off with the January 2023 calendar prompt form the WDC Anniversary calendar: What is your biggest goal you want to achieve?

My biggest goal for 2023 is to get healthy. I wrote above about my writing goals which are also big goals, but I think the overriding thing I need to focus on is my health. Now that I'm in my *cough* forties *cough* the days of being able to eat whatever I want and live a sedentary existence are pretty much over if I want to improve my odds of living a long life (arguably, those days were over more than a decade ago ), so I'm feeling like this is the year I need to make some smarter choices like eating better and exercising more.

I don't exactly know what that looks like at the moment, but I read Atomic Habits last year and really loved the way that it broke down establishing new habits and getting rid of bad habits into small, manageable steps. I'm going to try to do something like that with my health decisions this year, the ultimately goal being to look back on 2023 at the end of this year and see the cumulative effect of a number of small, smart decisions that have been made along the way. I'm not committing to any specific amount of weight lost or fitness goals achieved, I just want to start the process of recalibrating to the right direction and start down that path so I have something to build on over the following months and beyond.