Worthy imitation

I jotted down a few sentences.
I erased.
I read (and attempted to analyze) someone else's blog.

I scribbled down some more words.
Made adjustments.
No.
Erased again.
Analyzed another blog.
.................................

As someone who really likes being relational and enjoys observing other people's writing styles, I regularly check in on multiple different blogs in a wide range of styles and purposes.  Honestly, I don't even know all of the blog authors that I read, yet I still enjoy reading what they have to say...and, most of all, how they say it.

I find it captivating that a personality can be so evident through word usage and even punctuation or emphases.  I am fascinated by the way that each individual arranges words and puts two very different pictures together to create a strangely relate-able concept or the way that a person can so accurately put to words a feeling that pulls on my heart, too, so that I want to say "that's what I've been wanting to communicate all along."  The words and ideas flow in perfect and unique smoothness, like a river of chocolate for the mind to drink up.

But sometimes I want to drink up their writing for the wrong reason: I want my writing style to become a flawless reflection of their writing style.  (I have no problem with studying other talented writers for the sake of self-improvement, but it isn't healthy when done in an obsessive way that searches for how to imitate without plagiarizing!)
I look at my own general attempt at writing and my blog and grow frustrated with myself.  I can think creatively and outside-the-boxy and I can even be funny sometimes, but it seems like my fingers, my pen, my computer keys can't be any of those things.

When I read my writing, it doesn't sound like the writers I admire.  My thoughts can't seem to be translated into written sentences in the way that I hear them in my head.  I know every piece of the struggle behind writing for myself, and I hate it.  I hate that writing comes to me so slowly and painfully when it used to be an extension of myself as a kid.  I hate that my writing--and the process itself--is filled with flaws, when it's really a work in progress for everyone.  We are just all at different stages.

In reality, I want my writing to become someone else's writing instead.

And it's not just writing.  I have a tendency, like many, many of us do, to make comparisons in numerous areas of my life.  I want to look like someone else, talk like someone else, and have brains like someone else.  I tell myself that being me isn't good enough.  It's not cutting the cake.  So life becomes a cycle of trying.  Trying harder to resemble whatever I am not.  And I'm wasting my time trying to resemble the wrong people and things.

Paul tells us "Be imitators of GOD," but when I view the world I habitually tell myself "be an imitator of her style, of his writing, of those passionate people."  All the while I forget that I'm wasting my time by not doing what God instructed in Ephesians.
What would life look like if I started spending that mental time figuring out how to imitate God as accurately as possible?  I bet it would be freeing.  It would be rewarding.  It would be a fulfillment of the highest calling that is offered.

Let's answer the higher calling together.  Imitate Christ's truly perfect example.

(Other resources: highly recommend my friend's blog, particularly her post on comparison)