Sunday Scribblings - May 15th, 2011

The prompt this week for Sunday Scribblings: Surrender. 


Do you use Blogger? Even if you don't you have probably read through your internet travels that Blogger was not working for quite a while last week. How did you cope with Blogger being down for rather a long time? How long did you keep trying before surrendering to the idea that Blogger wasn't working and probably wouldn't be for a while. How did you accept being unable to post when you wanted to? Did you, like me, try many, many times to log in and become very familiar with that message 'Blogger is currently unavailable". Did any of your posts or comments disappear? It really made me wonder what was going on when a post I was sure I had published just wasn't there. For a moment I did question my memory. Did I really press 'publish'? 


All of this got me thinking about surrendering. Yes, it was frustrating to not be able to post when I want to. I didn't accept it really easily. I did keep trying. On my blog Pausing to pick up small stones I post a small piece of writing every day. I have managed to post something every day for the whole year. That is, until the Blogger outage. Now there is one day that I failed to post. That is disappointing and got me thinking about failure. Sometimes we fail due to circumstances completely out of our control. Or maybe it's not really a failure but a change of plans. The idea behind writing small stones is to take some time to really notice a small moment and to write that down. Posting those moments has increased my accountability to myself to actually notice and record the small moments. But really I don't need the blog at all. I still wrote a small stone. I was just unable to post it at the time that I wanted to. Often we rely on others to complete tasks and achieve goals. Sometimes we will be let down. We can choose to struggle with that or surrender. For me how much I struggle and surrender (or both) varies rather a lot. It can be very difficult to accept limitations either within myself or placed on me by others. It often feels good though when I do surrender and accept that I cannot do something, even if that means just taking a break and doing something else for a while. An example of this has been the times when the car has broken down suddenly and I have found myself needing to walk to places a lot more. At first I really struggle against doing so but when I do surrender to the idea of walking I find some positives in that. There is more time to notice when walking compared to driving! 


The Blogger outage also got me thinking about appreciation. I do take the availability of Blogger for granted. It was a shock when it wasn't there. Now that it is back I find myself feeling a little more appreciative. How amazing it is really that we are able to write something and people from all over the world are then able to read it instantly. The ability to communicate with others in this way was virtually unimaginable not so very long ago. The ability to do so is due to the work of a lot of people who I really don't think about very much. Thank you everyone who helps Blogger to function so smoothly most of the time! It is similar with the car situation. After going without a car for a while, during those first few trips I am very appreciative. 


Concerning the Blogger outage, as many others have written, I did find other things to do after a while and enjoyed doing them. I am glad Blogger is back and working now though!