I’m in a bit of a writing mid-life crisis – and just as I was pondering and over-analyzing and debating on my goals and plans for the blog, I read my bloggy friend Georgia’s latest blog post. I love Georgia’s blog, and if you aren’t reading it yet, you really should. It looks like she got the original post from ohsimplethoughts.com – which also looks like a pretty cool blog. It’s a series of questions to refocus your blog, remember why you’re blogging and what you want out of it…
QUESTION # 1: WHAT IS YOUR BLOG ABOUT?
My blog is about me. At the heart of it, it’s my story. The story of my marriage, my daughters, and my son. It’s the story about me, as a wife, a mother, and a woman. It’s about my culture and my faith, my traditions, my spirituality and my struggle and triumphs. I’m a married mom, and at times, I’m baffled by how I managed to pull that off. I’m married to my best friend, raising three children that are so much more than I ever dreamed of. I have my happily-ever-after, and I’m enormously grateful. I’m also exhausted, frustrated that none of them ever think to bring a dish back to the kitchen, and worried that I’m somehow messing the whole parenting thing up.
QUESTION # 2: WHAT IS YOUR BLOG NOT ABOUT?
This is almost easier to answer – my blog is not about providing a service to anyone. It’s not a DIY or a crafty sort of blog. I don’t do giveaways or provide helpful tips on how to parent or how to cook. You won’t find any interesting recipes on my blog, because I get all of mine off of google. And mostly because I really don’t like cooking, and do it only because it’s too expensive to eat out all the time. I write about religion a little, but mostly within the confines of my own experiences. I decorate mainly with hand-me-down furniture and paintings that my kids bring home from school. I’m a crappy photographer, so you won’t find many pinterest-able images here.
QUESTION # 3: WHY DO YOU BLOG?
I started blogging because I was a writer with a toddler who kept stealing my notebooks for coloring. Putting it on-line was a no-brainer, it was a way to make sure I didn’t lose my journal. At the heart of it, that’s what it is. I journal – I’ve done it since I was a kid. Writing is how I process my life. It’s how I figure out what I’m thinking and what I want. I blog for my kids, so they can look back on their childhood and have a record of how I felt about it. I blog for myself – I really like reading my old blog posts. Remembering those events, the day I dropped three year old Jessie off at camp, and then went back and took her home with me because she looked so sad, the look on Sammy’s face when he saw the new vacuum cleaner when he was two, the way that Julianna would snuggle into me before she fell asleep. I’m going to want a record of that.
QUESTION # 4: WHAT DREAMS OR GOALS DO YOU HAVE FOR YOUR BLOG?
Ah – this is where I’m stuck. Because dreams and goals, I’ve got lots of – I’m just not sure where the blog fits. I almost feel like in order to “succeed” as a blogger, I’d have to change it. But I don’t want to change so much of it that I don’t want to write it – or worse, don’t want to reread it twenty years from now. I’ve got my book, which is always there, in the back of my mind, begging me to find time to finish it. I’ve got a fledgling free-lance career, with editors that are lovely and encouraging. The blog could be a great platform for both of those things, but focusing on “growing” the blog almost feels like I need to not focus on the writing but spend more time appealing to a wider audience, and not necessarily writing the way that I have been for so long. I’d love to have a zillion readers and a huge following of readers desperate for my next article or book, but I’m not always certain on the path that I should follow to get there.
QUESTION # 5: HOW WILL YOU ORGANIZE YOUR BLOG?
I don’t have an answer for this yet. I have thoughts – but no answers. I think ideally, I’d like to blog four or five times a week, but rarely get there. I think I’m going to incorporate some book reviews (mainly because I found this cool site that will send me free books for me to review). I think I’m going to try and carve out an hour a day for writing. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but that’s a lot of focused time for me. This isn’t my full-time job, it isn’t even my part time job. When I’m not parenting, I’m cleaning. And when I’m not doing that, I’m volunteering in six different places and always a little bit behind in that as well. Writing for my blog has always been a priority, but one that flexes to fit in around my life. I’m not sure how much of that I’m willing to change. I don’t want my kids to remember their childhood as me at the computer all the time (so much better they remember me as constantly yelling at them to bring the dishes to the kitchen and please shut off the bathroom light….).
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