Blogging and Burnout - My Notes

These were my personal notes that I was reading from (fleshed out into a real post instead of a bulleted list). And no, we aren't going to get rid of the "Southern Duo" note pages just yet, so you are free to link to them on your own posts. Aren't these cute little graphics? A bigger version is on the two links above under the words 'Blogging' and 'Burnout'. Dawn created these for the webpages we used at the conference. She's just so talented!


FROM BURNOUT SESSION (notes by Sprittibee)

“Burnout is nature's way of telling you, you've been going through the motions your soul has departed; you're a zombie, a member of the walking dead, a sleepwalker."
- Sam Keen

The Most Important Weapon Against Burnout is Prayer
Prayer is the most important thing you can do in your Christian life. You can know what burnout is, have all the how-to books on the market about beating it, understand ways to overcome it ... and still be living in a state of defeat (like me this past year). But with God's help, you CAN get your joy back. Or what I like to call "get your groove back".

Here are some interesting things about prayer (taken from a sermon by Dane Boyles - linked on the video conference notes in case you wanted to hear it):

Prayer is an act of dedication. It is admitting your need for God. The bible says that we can do nothing without Him. Why, then, do we think we can homeschool affectively if we don't abide in Him daily?

When the apostles had the chance to ask Jesus for something, they asked him "Lord, teach us how to pray." He gave us the Lord's Prayer. In that prayer is the verse, “Let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. Prayer is the link between the eternal and temporal... the link between location and revelation. When we pray, we pray God's eternal will for our family into our chaos and burnout. His truth then becomes the center of reality and through His power, we see change happen. This is a proven fact. Even my children know that prayer is the way to start the day off. They often ask me to "start over" the day so we can pray first. My kids literally won't let me get away with doing Bible after other subjects because we have learned the hard way that it ends in the day unraveling.

God also uses prayer as our means of supplication (asking for what we need) –
In fact, James 4:2 says “You have not because you ask not.”
There are some 20 places where God tells us to ASK!!!

Prayer is also an act of cooperation – getting with God’s program. I know when I’m burned out I need REPROGRAMMING. When I’m praying to God it tends to stop the complaints and start the praises. God's Word says he inhabits the praise of His people. I know I need him to be in the house - especially when I'm in a funk.

Remember, even giants sometimes fall down. Don’t feel bad when you are having a great week then fail. Even great men (and great homeschool moms) fail. Elijah called fire from heaven and stopped the rain for years by just a single prayer in faith… and then ran away because he was afraid to be killed by Jezebel. What I love is that God doesn’t hold our humanity against us. He’s patient, our kids are forgiving, and if we seek Him, there’s no other option but to succeed.

FROM BLOGGING SESSION (notes by Sprittibee)

This was part of the quick history of blogging (researched on Wikipedia). The Wiki link is on our blogging page linked above. This is just my paraphrased version of it (in a nutshell). I thought it was pretty interesting even though I've been blogging for over three years now.

Blogging started out as online journals or diaries written by techie-types. The Drudge Report (political blog) became in 1998 reporting news that the mainstream media was sweeping under the rug. Blogs became more popular with the advent of web cameras and blogging software/tools that were flooding the market by 1999. In 2002 Iraq War bloggers were bringing us front line news that we couldn't have gotten any other way. In 2003 Google bought blogger.com. In 2004 there were a few scandals with televised news reporters using blog information as sources - the media began to take bloggers seriously... and also in 2004 the WORD blog became Miriam Webster's word of the year. Fortune Magazine listed “8 Blogs Businesses Can’t Ignore” and soon after a blog code of conduct was created.

What started out as personal accounts from online diary writers became a phenomenon that gave a voice to the masses. Now you don’t have to be extra real important to be heard. All of the sudden, retailers and reporters are scrambling to find out what regular people think. Blogs are now the new consciousness.

Now in 2008, there are some 112.8 million blogs being tracked by Technorati. That means...
175,000 new every day
1.6 million posts per day
18 updates a second

That’s a lot of blogging!

The rest of our notes, links and resources are up on the pages Dawn created. You'll have to forgive me because my mind is on overload and my life has slipped into chaos during the past week with this conference and all the other excitement we have had going on in the Bee family. More on that later.

If you got to listen in, leave me a comment and say Hi here in my blog. I have been so bad about keeping up with comments lately. I usually try to reply via email to them, but so many of you don't leave your email address when you log in anonymously. I'll try to be better and get back in here every day to leave replies! Know that I'm reading and treasuring them even if I can't get back to you in a timely manner!

I think I have computer overload right now. I am being real when I say that I have over 1,000 emails in my in-box... which is another post altogether (and another reason I might be suffering from Burnout still!). Maybe I should declutter my email boxes as well as my filing cabinets!


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