Month: November 2022

Grateful Heart Monday

Welcome to another Grateful Heart Monday, where gratitude is the sole expression to start each of my week’s off in writing, which for today is for beginning something I’ve been avoiding for the better part of a decade now, that can only be credited to someone close to me that’s a rather new addition to my life who’s inspired me to overcome a fear I’ve placed in front of this massive task for a very long time, and that’s to start writing a book about all of my life’s experiences.

I’ve lost track of the number of times ever since I began doing motivational speaking in 2007 where people have told me I need to write a book all that I’ve been through. While I know I’ve been writing about my life in this blog, my truth is that the excerpts I place in here are simply that, they’re snippets. Even with the almost 10 years deep now I’ve been maintaining this blog and writing one unique expression of my life after another, I’ve never told ALL the stories of my life and shared ALL the pain I’ve endured.

Some of my stories are ones I just can’t seem to express. Some are just too painful. The life I’ve lived often feels far too painful to share to the whole as a while. But enter someone ironically enough named Andy, a guy who found a way to inspire me to become more than I’ve been by giving me the challenge to write one chapter to the next from my earliest memories on forward, and then sharing it line by line and chapter by chapter, reading it all to him.

At first, I balked at the assignment and made all the excuses I have before. I told him I’m not ready and said I’m still waiting on God for a sign to start. But I don’t like fear controlling me nor do I like when darkness of this world starts trying creep back in to a facet or crevice within my life, so I agreed one day recently to start the task, and presently I’m nine full chapters in.

It’s been a challenge that’s for sure, as many of the words I’ve written thus far I’ve never told a soul. Not one therapist, not one partner, and not anyone for that matter. I’m finally getting it all down, words that come from my heart of hearts, and ones that aren’t easy to tell.

So, on this Grateful Heart Monday, on this very day, I’m thankful for a guy named Andy who inspired me to be more to write something I’ve been avoiding for far too long, one that I know in the long run is exactly what I know God would have me do, one that one day will be shared with all of you too.

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

Question For The Day

Today’s question is…

Is there something you’ve been doing for some time now that you find you are worn out doing and are questioning whether you want to keep doing it? If so, what is it?

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

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To Keep TheTwelfthStep.com Going Or Not, That Is The Question…

Pretty soon I’ll be coming up to the 10-year anniversary mark since I began writing for this site, TheTwelfthStep.com. Presently, I’ve written well over 2000 original articles for it, but I find myself now at a crossroads with it wondering if I really want to keep it going.

One thing I have the ability with when it comes to this blog, is to see how many are actually reading it daily. It has a tool built into it behind the scenes on WordPress that shows me the level of traffic hitting my site each day, including where that traffic originates from and any specific terms searched for within it. For the longest time I was averaging between 50 and 100 readers a day, which in all honesty I was thankful for. I know that those numbers are pretty minuscule when it comes to social media presence, but I was thankful for each of my daily readers nonetheless. I also learned to not care about having more of an Internet presence because I enjoyed writing about my life and sharing my experiences transparently with the rest of the world.

When I got on Facebook and Twitter years ago, I found they were a great way to increase my site’s traffic by reposting links to each of my blog entries. I became thankful for every time a reader who reached out publicly or behind the scenes to tell me how much my words affected them. Unfortunately, my site’s traffic and visibility on Facebook and Twitter have been reduced to a mere handful of people checking it out now on a daily basis, mainly due to social media changing their formulas for what they feel deserves to show up everyone’s individual’s newsfeeds. Sadly, Facebook’s and Twitter’s formulas don’t find what I write to be important enough for the world to see anymore, so when I repost my excerpts on either, they get completely suppressed now. Most of my friends have told me they never see my articles showing up on their timelines anymore. So, in all reality, I am simply writing for myself these days, making this blog mainly an online journal or diary of sorts and nothing more. It’s why I find I am questioning my motive lately whether I want to keep this going. Because I don’t find that I am feeling fed anymore by all the work I keep putting into it and that’s something I’m not taking lightly.

To keep this blog going actually costs me about $700 a year and takes about 6 to 7 hours of my time every week. In the grand scheme of things that’s not much of a commitment either financially or with my time, but for me, it does add a lot of stress. While I originally began this blog as a cathartic way to work through my own inner demons of my life, I had always hoped it would grow in size and gain better readership along the way. It hasn’t and in fact is now losing most of my original readership, all because of what social media considers important these days. Writing about self-healing, life experiences, and the spiritual journey I’ve been on, which is quite unique in of itself, seems like it’s not that important as far as where the rest of the world is concerned.

While I haven’t made a final decision yet whether to close this site down or continue keeping it up and running, me writing this very article is simply putting it out there to the Universe, or God if you may, asking for some sort of sign whether I’m meant to keep doing this. Look, I love writing, truly I do, but I feel I’ve exhausted most of my life’s experiences in here and have been re-sharing things in recent years that I know I’ve already shared before in some fashion. It almost feels as if I’m just repeating and rehashing the same material now again and again, simply for the sake of producing yet another article. I find this isn’t being productive anymore for my spiritual journey and I am praying for guidance from God surrounding this.

I don’t know if this article will even be read by more than a dozen people or less, but if somehow even one person responds to me and asks to keep it going because it’s helped their life somehow, then I’m going to take that as a sign from God to not give up. But if no one responds to these very words I write from my fragile heart, then I plan to take it as a sign it may just be time to call it a day and shut this site down, once and for all. It’s in Your court God now. I leave this with You…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson