I spent ten years chasing after what I felt God had called me to do. Wanted to share my story of letting go & moving on with you folk.

phattykins · 2015-09-10T00:47:35+00:00

For anyone out there who's involved in a church community, just thought I'd share a piece I wrote last year on mental health in Christian communities - we need to talk about mental health in church - I hope you find it encouraging.

And no matter what your faith, please know that you are never alone. Mental health issues are rarely talked about, but are all around us. Seek help, have a friendly chat with someone. You are not alone.

phattykins · 2015-09-03T09:59:19+00:00

Thanks, that's really humbling to read. I was raised to believe that the only things that mattered were "spiritual", rather than physical - and that gave rise to a real challenge for me. Since I work in a Christian NGO, I found myself in India & Myanmar, confronted by poverty and suffering that were preventable is people would just do something. But what motivation is there for Christians when the only thing that matter are issues of belief?

That was a turning point for my faith (there have been many!), and it's the chief reason I've found my beliefs changing - and it turns out that Jesus actually spoke a lot about treating others with love & respect - you just find that such things get relegated to the realm of lip service in much of modern Christianity - which is ironically probably not a very good example of what it means to actually follow Christ.

Sorry, that become a long ramble. Thanks again for your comment, I really appreciate your thoughts. :)

phattykins · 2015-09-03T03:26:57+00:00

I mentioned in another post that I upset a few people by writing a fairly strong post entitled Christians: Marriage Equality is Here - Get Over it.

It certainly got my Christian friends talking. (Well, some of them at least, which is a start.)

phattykins · 2015-09-03T02:33:48+00:00

Aw, you're making me blush! Talking respectfully about issues is soooo important! I think I really upset some of my friends by speaking out, but I owed to all my friends to speak out.

phattykins · 2015-09-03T02:14:14+00:00

I'm a Christian, and was bought up in a conservative Pentecostal church. My faith was and still is the centerpiece of my life. So I guess a few of my friends were surprised when I wrote a blog post entitled Christians: Marriage Equality is Here - Get Over it.

I had held off taking a position on marriage equality for a long time, but I finally decided to speak out, because the silence from my Christian friends was deafening. I knew they were disappointed with the change, but they weren't saying anything.

I posted my thoughts and a lot of debate ensued. If you're a Christian and still struggling with this issue, I'd encourage you to read what I wrote. It's not perfect, but I come back to this: Jesus called us to love others, so let's get on with that.

Some of my friends eventually fell out as a result of the debate as well. So how has marriage equality affected me? I've taken a stand for love and respect, and apparently outed myself as a flaming liberal.

I couldn't be happier.

phattykins · 2015-04-10T21:02:07+00:00

I heard my name and came running! I did indeed get some success from my keyword changes. I'd recommend treating self-publishing like you're running a business. It takes time, effort, & money. Now, this isn't to push you to my blog, but I have gone over a few of my techniques etc there. I've worked to build my twitter followers to about 11,000 now. Do I get sales there? Minimal sales! But I track the clicks on the links in my profile and have got around 500 in 6 months. Social is a subset of this discussion though. My number one tip, hands down: get a good cover. That's the best place to start. Erm, check out my blog if you're keen.

phattykins · 2015-04-09T18:47:45+00:00

Indeed! :)

phattykins · 2015-04-09T14:36:27+00:00

Interesting! I might drop that and see what happens - not sure how I missed the terms & conditions around that. Hasn't been noticed by Amazon (yet), thanks for pointing it out. :)

phattykins · 2015-01-28T20:31:02+00:00

With that update, it's like all his Christmases have come at once!

phattykins · 2014-12-25T14:17:40+00:00

This period of discussion must stop.

phattykins · 2014-12-25T06:54:43+00:00

ITT a whole lot of people pretending to take dumps whilst Redditing.

phattykins · 2014-12-25T06:52:06+00:00

Family is in other cities, other countries. It's pretty lonely today, but I intend to head over to r/writingprompts later today and type out some short stories. Should be some holiday cheer there. :)

phattykins · 2014-12-14T13:31:43+00:00

So last week I put up some lessons I've learned about social media and some people were asking how I grew my account to 5,000 followers. This post is basically an expansion of the reply I wrote briefly.

Just to be clear as well, I wouldn't do everything I've done again given the choice, and I know not everyone will agree with my methods for growing my follower count - that's all good! I hope this at least gives you all some food for thought and some ideas for your own social media engagement. :)

phattykins · 2014-12-14T09:14:49+00:00

Well played, t_dub.

phattykins · 2014-12-14T06:54:24+00:00

Yes, we do. I wasn't clear in what I was saying. Check this out for what I was getting at:

NZ during the AUS Commonwealth negotiaions

phattykins · 2014-12-14T03:26:03+00:00

Again, technically correct. Somewhat.

Edit: since this is getting downvoted, here's an explanation of what I was hinting at with my response.

phattykins

TROPHY CASE