Balancing your iPod

I think I'm going to get serious about writing in 2006.

So...I was in the local library (Barnes and Noble) looking at how other writers go about their craft and I came across this quote:

"Read the greatest stuff but read the stuff that isn't so great, too.  Great stuff is very discouraging.  If you only read Beckett and Chekhov, you'll go away and only deliver telegrams at Western Union" - Edward Albee

When I read it I had one of those "I've been there" moments.

As a communicator, church planter, pastor...many of us have a shared experience.  You go to a conference...listen to the best...see some inspiring things...and you go away profoundly discouraged...in fact borderline depressed.  "I could never do that", you tell yourself. 

And you are probably right...you can't.  But you can do something.

Can I share a secret with you? 

One of the ways I stay encouraged is by balancing my iPod.

I'm not going to tell you who is on my iPod.  You probably won't find a list on this sight of the "Top 5" preachers/teachers that I listen too.  Oh, I've got the usual mixture of the great communicators ... I want to hear what God is saying through them and I want to learn how they say it.  But that's not all I listen too.

I've got some guys on there that, frankly, just aren't that good...and I've downloaded them on purpose.  I don't do it to feel superior or to privately ridicule their inadequacies.  I do it to remind myself that we are all human...and most of us aren't world class...but we can all be used by God.

"Great stuff can be very discouraging".

By the way...that's one of the reasons we offer podcasts of our messages for free on iTunes...to help balance other peoples iPods.

Comments

[Don Fort]

Greg, you bring to mind a avriaiton on the KISS principle I hadn't heard before last night, Keep It Simple and Stupid. At simple AND stupid, I can do that vs a paniced look of "I could never do that."

For the time, telling Simon and Andrew "...Come, follow me and I will make you fishers of men." was far simpler that telling a couple of guys on a fishing boat "Hey, I want you two to be my disciples." (After which, I can only imagine a Bubba looking at his cousin Goober and asking, "He wants us to do what?")

Thanks Greg
(and eschew obfuscation) ;)

[rick]

BIRD BY BIRD, by anne lamott - best book on writing i've ever read :) - balanced, too.

[Charlie Pharis]

It was Ralph Waldo Emerson who said...
Every artist was first an amateur.

[Geoff Surratt]

I was going to recommend Bird by Bird as well, but watch out for the emerging language. Her advise about shall we say less than perfect first drafts if worth the price of the book.

[Jim Coman]

Greg,
I love this post, for many reasons. In my career, I find myself getting discouraged sometimes when I am around very profound speakers, who always seem to know or have the perfect thing to say or way to say it. One of them happens to be my boss, who, as great as he is, and as much as I have learned from him, sometimes intimidates me with his ability to speak in public. Its a fine line between it motivating me to get better, and sometimes discouraging me. Glad I'm not the only one that experiences those emotions!
Thanks