Blogging Has Its Risks

What is effective communication?

According to a recent class, effective communication occurs when the receiver receives the message as intended by the person communicating. Receiving the message as intended.

So many times we hear what we want to hear or extrapolate pieces of a message and turn them into something not intended by the person communicating. Communication is a two-way process – someone has to speak and someone has to listen; not presuppose what the other is going to say and mentally craft a response to what they think they heard the person say.

In communication there is such a thing as taking words out of context and taking minor themes and turning them into major ones when that was not the intent.

Yesterday Pastor Deanna left a great comment on my post. She said,

There’s a post sitting in my draft box right now that may never make it to publish. If I do press publish someone may leave the church. That is just reality. My understanding of reality also tells me that whether I press publish or not they will probably leave the church. But my husband would rather my blog never be a catalyst for that.

At some point in your blogging experience someone is going to be upset with what you write. Yes, they are your words, it’s your blog and your thoughts but know those words have consequences.

The Dixie Chicks know this full well. They spoke their mind on a certain and issue and lost a huge fan base. Their words had serious consequences. I read recently that they were touring with the Eagles and the comments following the article let me know people don’t forgive. You would have thought all of this went down yesterday. Some people were going to boycott the Eagles because they were touring with the Chicks. All because of words spoken years ago.

I was recently called to the carpet for something I wrote. One minor thought had been lifted and blown into something huge. I had to go back and reread the post for myself. I came to the conclusion that no matter how well you write or speak, people will filter you words through their own experiences -good or bad. I couldn’t understand the confusion because IN CONTEXT, the post was not condemning. Actually it was quite the opposite. I don’t get the impression the person read the post because of how they inquired about it. So if I speculate or do some deductive reasoning, I have to ask, did someone read the post then call this person and give them that ONE line out of the entire post? How. Cruel. Again purely speculation and I pray I’m wrong.

But the fact is your words, the words you labor over, the words you delete and retype, sometimes don’t always reach the receiver as intended and dealing with the aftermath is frustrating. At one point I thought about deleting it all but came to my senses.

For that one bad experience, there have been dozens of good ones so in the balance of things, this blog lives.

Will someone else take issue with what’s written here?

Definitely.

Will this be the last time my words get mangled and used inappropriately?

Probably not.

I know the risks of blogging.

But I accept those risks and keep writing anyway.

Will you?