I mentioned last week that I felt I’d lost my blogging mojo so this post is to explain, draw a line under it and move on. A quick recap on my time within the blogosphere. I started my first blog to support my online stationery business Dandelion Lounge back in 2008, I ventured into Twitter in 2009 pregnant with Baby G and really enjoyed the communities and people I met. The lovely Violet Posy designed this, my Cheshire Mum blog, for me and it was like a lovely new school book and off I went posting about my world as a mum of a toddler and a baby.
I was joining in meme’s, tagging people and being tagged. All was good. Life is tough with two, such a different ball game to life with one child but it is fun and I was sharing my experience and others seemed to be finding my posts helpful and that made me happy. My blog and time on Twitter has brought me great friendships and support. I’ve also been able to try and review products and my social networking has brought me three new marketing clients (Manuka Baby, Cosatto & Lets Gabba) helping me in my quest to work as a self employed, work at home mum.
Then it happened. What happened made me scared to blog. So when I say “I lost my mojo” I didn’t really lose it, it was taken away from me. What happened was my real life and my screen life met. At first my screen life ventured into my real life and I met up with some of the lovely bloggers I tweet with Amy, Cara and some other buddies and that was lovely.
What was far from lovely was my real life meeting my screen life. I was stupid. I unintentially hurt and caused upset with my extended family. I shall say no more about “tweet-gate” as it now referred to at Lancaster Towers as least said soonest mended. Suffice to say I very nearly took this blog down and hung up my blogging boots for good. This is why I have been hiding behind product reviews and meme posts. I’ve been hiding because I’ve been terribly upset. I’ve been criticised, told off and made to feel embarrassed for blogging. It left me feeling supervised, observed, scrutinised, paranoid and upset. This place here, my place, my little corner of the enormous world wide web I felt had been invaded with people waiting for me to make a mistake.
I’ve pulled myself together this week and given myself one hour to write this post, publish it and move on. I think the reality is that the rules, the etiquette of life in the 21st Century are developing, how real life and screen life blend are not yet written. I think screen worlds can merge in the real world because both sides understand it. I think folk in the real world who don’t venture into what I call screen worlds are perhaps intimidated by these unknown communities. We are all new to sharing our lives in this way but one thing is for sure our online lives are here to stay! I now have my own blogging rules. I’d be interested to know if anyone else has the same and did you always have then or did something happen?
My final thought on the matter is “seek and you shall find”. So with that put to bed, without further ado, normal blogging service shall resume.
My name is Claire, I have a toddler and a baby, I write a blog called Cheshire Mum and I love my real life and my screen life!
