Rev. Dr. Lewis Winkler

I met an interesting person last weekend. Rev. Dr. Lewis Winkler is a faculty staff in East Asia School of Theology teaching Christian Theology. When I asked him whether he is blogging, he said no.

Many people has asked that question to him, but he is still decided not to blog. The reason is his belief that blogging will take too much time from him. It is simply not for his personality. He is a deep person, thinker that blogging and structuring his thought into short article in a blog will simply take too much time. Many other things can be done if he is not blogging, so he is decided not to blog.

He wrote books instead. He’s about to submit one book to one publication in United States on objective study of the differences between Christians and Moslems in handling religious differences. He has also started writing on his second book on the subject of the hidden-ness of God. Many books has been published on how God is real in people’s live, but in this book he is going to share why sometimes God hides himself. God asked us to look at the needy people around us as He is there.

More than what he explained about his books, I learned one message from him. He has not found a publisher, so I asked him why not going for self-publishing. His answer is the inspiration to this article. He writes not for the sake of publication or money, he writes to get his message heard. Publishers know the best about reaching wider audience and that is why he chose to go with an established publisher, even if it is tough.

He taught me to write a book only when we have some message we believe we are the one to speak about. There is simply too many books out there. I don’t know how many authors write just to get their name popular, just for profit or for the sake of writing a book. Dr. Lewis’ message is to write only if you believe you have some message that others need to see and understand, and you are the one that should speak about it. Isn’t that a better perspective?

Knowledge Codification

Knowledge codification is taking too much time, do you agree with me? Putting our tacit knowledge (what we know) into written format is a process that really takes time. If there is a spectrum between sharers of knowledge to the hoarders of knowledge, I might be closer to the sharers of knowledge.

If possible, I want to codify what I learned in life, every books that I read, every inspiration there is to share, every interesting thoughts or imaginations. Unfortunately I have to put things into reality, that writing really takes time. What I learned while starting something on my own, being paid for results rather than time, is that I don’t have much time to codify my knowledge anymore. I have to keep up with my study and make ends meet that I might have no more time to blog. It’s tough, blogging is actually something that I enjoy.

I guess I will blog only when I take a break from my study and work. But after the second thought, maybe not, I will blog only when I have a message to share, message to write, not to gain popularity from people or search engine, not to keep up with certain regularity, not to make me a consistent blogger or so, but simply when I have an important message to share with you.

Share your knowledge, with thoughts, with filter, with purpose!
Don’t simply write to join this information overloaded era.

Best,
Robert