Refocus and Reveal — Pat Dryburgh

This post is a bit misleading. Its purpose is to celebrate my 100th blog post. However, anyone who has known me for a while knows that this is not the first blog I’ve ever had and definitely not the first 100 blog posts I’ve ever written. In fact, my blogging days go back almost 5 years during my time at Emmanuel Bible College (xanga, anyone?).

Yet it seems to me that this part of my journey is starting to close. It started when I left my position as Associate Director of Music at Connexus Community Church. Upon my departure, I closed down the blog I had been keeping, “Journeys of a Rookie Worship Pastor.” I had built a fairly solid readership, had several hundred blog posts, and had participated in some amazing discussions. It was also the first time I really began to see the value of blogging when it comes to networking. However, because of the change in my personal life, I felt I needed to embark on a new direction in my blog-life.

This decision led to a blog redesign and refocus. My posts started focusing more on design-related items. I posted a few “gallery” style posts that generated a ton of traffic but absolutely no discussion. I tried writing some tutorials, but I had nothing to write that hadn’t already been discussed. I decided that rather than writing about design, I would actually do some design for the blog. I released two WordPress child themes for the Thematic Theme Framework. I realized, though, that while these themes made my blog look spiffy, they did nothing to enhance the content.

And now here I am again, re-evaluating. I’m at a weird place in my life. I have a strong feeling about what I want to do for a living, but have no idea what the best route to go about it is. I feel like I have so many gifts and ideas that are just waiting to be developed, but see no avenue to properly do so. I have been spending as much time as I can reading and learning, and I want to share those things with others.

I spent some time this weekend stripping back the layers to this site. I’m hoping to expose more of myself, to engage in authentic dialogue and to encourage you to do the same. This is a new chapter in my life. I’m calling it “Revealed.”

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