I’m not above adjusting my plans to fit new data. In fact, it can be a bad thing. I sometimes have a hard time sticking to plans because I am too eager to adapt them. It’s very different when someone else is involved; I feel an enormous sense of responsibility to other people. But when it’s just me keeping a commitment to myself, well, that’s another story.

So I’m adjusting a few things behind the scenes. It’s been a few days since I posted, and that’s partly because home and family life needed more attention. Easy choice. I was also trying to make a daily practice of music, partly to keep up old skills, partly to practice producing homemade multimedia, and partly in the hopes of sharing some original music from a lifetime ago. I’m downgrading the music idea, at least for now. It takes a lot of time to improve. I don’t need to improve that quickly.

The biggest change, though, has been prioritizing Bible reading. I’m someone who desperately needs to have Scripture in my life, but I find myself always putting it on the back-burner to do other good things. Those things are usually for God, they are often doctrine-related, and so it doesn’t feel like the most sacrilegious trade-off.

However, I don’t think I can sustain a blog that’s just about my thoughts. The thoughts most worth sharing are based on the Bible. Every path I would like to see my life go down requires being saturated with Scripture. But even more importantly, my relationship with God depends on it. I need to hear His voice, not just to get somewhere but to BE with Him. It’s not part of a strategic plan. It’s part of a relationship.

I also find that the more time I spend on social media, the more fragmented my attention becomes. I once took a long break from television because I could feel it messing with my head. I distinctly remember watching an episode of Family Guy in college and just feeling scattered afterward. It’s well-done. I’m not complaining about the show in particular or TV in general. I just don’t like what it does to me, and so I changed our relationship. I’m feeling that pull in social media, too. I don’t like what it does to me, and so I want to change our relationship.

I want to focus on what matters most to God, and that’s found in His Word. There are good things online, but they are scattered among bad things, funny things, useless things, you name it. There are no rules for Facebook. We all use it for different things, and so we bounce from one purpose to the next, as though we’re channel-surfing our friends’ lives.

I’m not complaining about Facebook in particular or social media in general. I just don’t like what it does to me.

So I’m trying to turn that down (not off) and spend more time in the Bible and other books. It’s harder than I would have thought, and I plan to share some observations about that in the future. But it is so worthwhile. Not just because of what it does to me, but, again, because I want a daily, living relationship with the God who made me and saved me.