I love those blogs with arty pictures of beautiful crafts, descriptions of serene days, uplifting tales of gentle lessons learned from humorous occurrences. Blogs like Tales from the Village, with her gorgeous shots of garden glory. Or Home Baked online, who is someone I think I could enjoy spending silent time with. Or Josie, from Sleep is for the Weak who sometimes makes me want to cry with the aptness of a comment in under 140 characters on twitter.
My blog isn’t like that. I’ve never learnt how to take soft focus shots of beautiful leaves. (Although I might have done tonight, by listening to dp explaining it to Big. Hurry back tomorrow to check.) I rarely put my phone down long enough to craft any more, although I have put it down lots recently to do glittery hand print things with children, or read books with them, or cook, or chauffeur them to swimming.
If I’m not online as much as I was, it’s because I can also be found in another place, over at our business Colneis Technology. I’ve taken on a Social media and marketing role, and I’m trying to work out how to sell websites to businesses. It’s a new idea to me – I’m not one for the hard sell tbh, so I’m trying to work out ways of building a business profile by doing things I believe in.
In and amongst all of this, there’s still the day to day mundanities of nappies to change, washing and washing up to do, shopping to fetch and decluttering (DECLUTTERING!) to be achieved. And I rarely blog the bad bits – don’t tend to go on about the tantrums we may experience when maths doesn’t go quite the way it should, or siblings fall out, or I can’t find my tea cup. (Turned out someone had washed it up. That was unexpected.)
Does that make you think any less of me? That I don’t always tell the full truth? What I blog is always true. It’s honest from my point of view. I might tweak it to present my story in a way that I think may gain sympathy, but isn’t that roughly what we all do, all the time? I’ve been told quite a few times that the strength of this blog is its authenticity, but there are times that I feel positively fraudulent.
I don’t tell stories that aren’t my own. Which is why the older children appear less and less – as they grow older and more independent, less entwined with me, it becomes more apparent which parts are my bits to talk about, and which bits are theirs. Given that they both blog, if you want to find out about them, you can read about them in their own words. (Really should add them to my blogroll, shouldn’t I?) Stories to do with the younger children are about our interactions, or their beautifulness, because I am ever such a proud mummy – I’ve got good at this baby thing 😉
What am I saying? I’m not altogether sure. I think I’m probably saying that I think that there’s room for all kinds of blogs in the blogosphere. And that’s good. Because there aren’t any two bloggers who are the same.
Like snowflakes.
I’d blog a picture of a snowflake right about now if I had one. But I don’t. So have a cute picture of a baby with (homemade) pizza instead 😉
Julie says
I’m with you on the soft focus envy (although to be honest, I’ve never been much of a photographer anyway), but the beauty of the “blogosphere”, for want of a better word, surely must be its variety…
Allie says
I get bored if it’s all too pretty. Your blog is real life and that’s why I like it. 🙂
TheBoyandMe says
Doesn’t every person who writes something manipulate words? It’s the sign of a good writer that they use specific vocabulary and phrase things in a certain way in order to engage the reader. You do write honestly, and you write well. Your blog, your rules.
Hannah@HomeBaked says
Silent time together… is that a compliment?! lol
The beauty of blogging is that we get to show what we want to, isn’t it? I get where you’re coming from, I think – I get those feelings sometimes when I look at other people’s pages and wish for more.
I do include pretty pictures and light hearted posts but I don’t feel fraudulent about not showing the bad stuff on a regular basis – we all have a never ending laundry mountain and endless mundane tasks to get on with, don’t we? I chose to focus on the good things because that was one of the reasons my blogging gained momentum in the first place – having been in the very depths of depression it was important to me to remind myself of the lovely things and to prevent things sliding back out of control by being accountable to an audience.
My life may look pretty and soft focused to you via my blog but I assure you that I get my fair share of ugly stuff going on too and I would trade almost everything I have to be in the circumstances that are distracting you from doing the same!
Zoe says
Have to agree, think we all keep a bit back from the blog-I know I like to look back on stuff we’ve done and think if I was complaining about washing piles, grumpy teenagers, family etc I might have to slap myself! I know I’ll miss it all one day so I’d rather look back in the good bits of my day.
The blog ring is fab by the way Jax-thank you! And ps very cute baby (feeling broody now!) :-))