Welcome to the Carnival of Personal Blogging
This post was written for inclusion in the Carnival of Personal Blogging hosted by Good Goog and Blogs With Wings. This month our participants have shared their journey to personal blogging. Please visit Good Goog - Begin By Being Personal to view everyone's posts.
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Ding Dong,
Is it just me, or is this place jumping the shark?
Maybe.
You see, I am having a wee bit of a blogging breakdown over here. An Interweb identity crises. Some writing performance anxiety. The dreaded bloggers block.
This is what happens when I think about sh*t too much.
Allow me to explain. (Everything but the Fonze. You can figure him out for yourself.)
The blue-sky-flow-chart-question-table I have going on in my head at the moment runs something like- For whom do I blog? Why am I blogging...? Is it because I purely enjoy the writing, or because I enjoy people reading it too...? If people hated my stuff and no one read it, would I still be here? How long till everyone gets jack of me, and takes their bat and ball and goes home? Will I still hang around the ballpark if they do?
And herein, I think, lies the problem.
Don't get me wrong- I love to blog. And I love to write. Every time I finish a post, complete one ready to publish with links and stolen piccies and tags, I get an enormous swell of satisfaction it feels really good it makes me hot all of those sound wrong, but you know what I mean. Blogging makes me happy. But if the question is- if no one was reading, would I still blog?
And... uh.... probably not.
I'll be honest- I never started to blog as a private journal, a record for me. While I'm proud to wear both my personal blogger and mummy blogger name tags, this blog is only a teeny tiny part of me and it's a very rare occurrence to see anything that's too dark, or too personal, that cuts me too deep, or infringes of the privacy of people I love. I have plenty of other playgrounds for my demons to run around in. My litmus test for blog inclusion is a simple question- "would I be happy to put this on the side of a bus, or announce it from a loudspeaker in Martin Place at lunchtime?"
If the answer is yes, then I hit Publish.
Erm. I'm the honest, open type, obviously. There's honesty and then there's, well, honesty. I practice both.
I don't write anything on here that I'm not happy to share publicly, or that I wouldn't want my mother knowing, or that I wouldn't want my children to see in 15 years time. (While we're on that topic, I find it astonishing that anyone thinks my blog will be still be around in 15 years. I do have a relatively short attention span, and there must be a limit on the amount of crap Google cache's).
I started my blog because I was bored and needed a hobby that wasn't physical enough to strip away any of the remaining energy I require to hang on to my last remaining shred of sanity. But this ain't therapy. I blog for amusement purposes only. The amusement of myself. And other people are amused, too, which is helpful. I'm narcissistic and conceited, and I bore of things easily- if people were not reading, I would not still be blogging.
But people are reading, bless you all and your little cotton socks. And I am feeling the pressure, just a wee bit. You see, part of my problem is- you people think I'm funny. I'm not sure why..? I can never tell which posts are actually funny and which posts are just funny-in-my-head-funny. I'll have an idea for a post these days and say to myself "Is that funny? Or just dumb?" (Such as- is buying haemorrhoid cream really an amusing subject? Or is that just me...?)
I thinks I need to stop this. I think I need to go back to the ol' school blog style- if it makes me giggle, then it's funny. If it makes me tingle, then it's good writing. I'm taking my lesson from B's Letter to Her Bloggy Self, and reminding me to blog for... well.. me. Some cliches, they are cliches for a reason. And that's cause they work.
I'm scraping in just in time with this for the Blogs With Wings Blog carnival being held at the Good Goog. Just call me a carnivaloholic.