It’s easy to make a strong argument from either angle: Either God absolutely loves you with an unflinching, never-giving-up, always and forever love, OR God talks about love but really just wants you to do the right thing or He’ll punish you.

“The biggest communication problem is that we don’t listen to understand. We listen to reply.”

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How many times have you “patiently” waited for someone to finish speaking so you could complete your thought? Under the wrong circumstances, we treat pauses as a necessary evil to allow the other person to speak – but only so we will have earned the right to speak more.

But do you listen to understand, or just to reply? If you’re formulating your points in silence, then you aren’t listening. And if you aren’t listening, you aren’t understanding. And if you aren’t understanding, you’re behaving selfishly.

If all that matters is what YOU have to say, then you aren’t loving or caring for the other person. It’s all about you. On the other hand, if you set aside your soapbox and listen without planning your reply in advance, the person you’re with will become more real and important to you. And that will affect how you treat them.

So do you listen to understand, or to reply?

Have you ever been to the hospital and the doctor, physician’s assistant, or nurse spoke to like you’re little more than an adorable idiot?

Ever called customer service and been asked, “Have you tried restarting your computer, sir?”

I live in two different worlds: the blog world and the journal world. One is painfully public and the other painfully private. I don’t write privately for an audience in the same way, so I occasionally get to the conclusion faster.

Twenty years ago, if you were publishing content on the Internet you were blazing a trail for tens of millions to follow. Your words had the opportunity to shape lives. Not because you were smarter or wiser than everyone else. It’s because you were one of a few voices getting a LOT of attention.

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If there’s one true thing that can be said about my digital footprint, it’s that the trail looks like a zombie apocalypse. The dead blogs are redirecting and the undead (abandoned blogs) are traipsing around the interwebs nonchalantly, occasionally chancing upon live prey.

My current living (not undead) project is ASelfObserved.com. Stop by and say hi. I love getting feedback on my questions and ideas.

Despite my typical laid-back demeanor, I’ve been accused of being too rigid regarding word choice in a conversation. It’s true. Many a debate has begun over whether a word “can” be used to mean something outside it’s textbook definition.

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We understand history based on where we are in the progression of the story. Most tales of entrepreneurs overcoming massive adversity are not told mid-story. There’s a good reason for this. If an entrepreneur came to you and told their story about how their manufacturer went belly up and their business partner over leveraged the business without partner approval, you wouldn’t be amazed and inspired. Because that story isn’t over yet. That person hasn’t reached the climax of the story where they overcome. 

It’s hard to know where a person is in their story if they haven’t overcome the major obstacle yet. So many people quit halfway. So one person’s failure might be the end of their story if they choose to walk away, while another person’s failure is a springboard to success as they receive and process the feedback of their failed attempt. 

But we love the stories of the overcomer. The winner. The person who bootstrapped and now sells a million plus each year. That’s amazing. We feel we can endure because of these people. Because of their stories. 

It’s why I hate sharing my own story when asked. I haven’t reached that point that will inspire and encourage. And so it sounds like life is just really really hard. I hate whining. When things are tough, you won’t find me savoring that “woe is me” attitude that’s made so many confessional and mommy bloggers famous. No matter how much we need to give ourselves grace to fail and be human, I can’t participate in the culture of failure that celebrates our failures and weaknesses and stops there. No, the failures and weaknesses provide us feedback, which we absorb to improve. 

Example: We moved to this property to homestead. I wanted to grow our own food to compliment the spring water feeding our house and land. But the business we owned has been a needy child. It has required more of my time than I anticipated, and the land has never had my full attention. And after three joy and pain-filled years, we no longer have goats. This stage of our business requires all hands on deck, and more flexibility for travel than goats will allow. So I made the painful but practical decision to trade our Nubians to farmers we know and trust. Our girls are well taken care of, and they are part of a much larger herd now. 

That’s sad in a way, because it feels like a setback. My ultimate goal of establishing a comprehensive permaculture design around our “forever home” is now on hold. We are ramping up two business ideas with the full intention of running them both in addition to the business we already have. There’s a legitimate goal we’ve set out to achieve, and achieving it would mean a different story for the rest of our lives. 

But I can’t tell you how we overcame disappointment and adversity to arrive at our dream destination… yet. But I will. Even if the dream changes yet again along the way. 

Some days the words just don’t flow. The well has run dry. The rest of life has a tight grip on your attention.

When you’re not a pro blogger, you blog when you can fit it in. When you can make it work. Not everyone is a full-time blogger. Trust me. When you’ve seen dozens of top notch bloggers burnt to toast and desperate to develop bus’inesses that live independent of content creation, you’re going to adjust your expectations. Writing can still be fun and meaningful without being the one thing you do to earn an income.

But thats not how the plan worked out

It used to feel like an insult that I, the guy who obsessed about blogging and knew all the ins and outs of the industry, was not the pro blogger of the family. Heather took over that role and honed her craft faithfully for years while I worked at small agencies consulting for SEO and social media. And yet I saw myself as a blogger. I talked about WordPress more than anyone else I knew. I was hooked on analytics… waiting for a hint of virality to go hog wild over.But I cast my net too wide and ultimately walked away from blogging for several years while Heather built her business.

I was trying to be someone other than me

It took me a long time to realize that I am a much more casual and spontaneous sort of writer. Some spontaneity can be trained and honed into a well-oiled practice. But the joy of writing and blogging for me has always been sharing from the heart as it comes. There’s not a ton of interest in a guy who does that. At least, not unless he’s built his name and reputation elsewhere. You can inspire a select few with inspirational jargon and introspection. But that kind of style isn’t likely to get any recognition until at least the author has passed. 

I’m no longer writing to be famous. I’m writing because it’s what I do. And that’s the way Daniel go.