So I listened to Spencer, who blogs over at Dad and Proud, talking at Britmums Live (for non-bloggers, it’s a conference for parenting bloggers). He’d done some market research for his talk (admitting it stretched as far as talking to three other bloggers). One of them, Purple Ella, had said that if you can list five reasons why you blog, and ‘meet’ those reasons in your blog’s content, you are in possession of blog-integrity. I can go along with that; the implication being that it isn’t all about the stats and the accolades, which is refreshing to hear from a man who had won an award the night before.
I blog to be a better writer, and to create a shop window for my writing. Some of the very first words I wrote on NDBI disclosed my intention to both practice my writing and practice promoting my writing. Enjoying modest success via a blog and enjoying the respect of one’s blogging peers is undoubtedly good for the ego. Reaching a place where I have been approached to do paid writing work as a result of what has been read here is thrilling, flattering, and a tonne of other adjectives ending in ing. A proper sense of British modesty compels me to say that I don’t write of my good fortune to boast, more as a reminder to others that as Wife in the North said, writing probably is 5% inspiration, 95% graft. NDBI is where I graft.
I blog to explore my own progress as a thinking parent – and to encourage thoughtfulness in other parents. Blogging has done much to improve my parenting, even in the very early days of its inception. I am certainly more considered, better informed, more patient with the kids since starting NDBI. I put more into what I plan to do with them, and as a consequence, we all get more out. Local friends have found real help in this post or that, and have started conversations with me at the midpoint because they’ve read something here that touches something of the parent in them. Digital chums have talked of how my words resonate and reassure. I LOVE that my words do this. I really, really do.
I blog to vent about stuff that makes me angry as a woman, mother, ordinary citizen. I have read more serious news media in the last months that in the last eight years. And I can engage, comment, get in on the debate. And be taken seriously. My working class roots have me thinking what, little old me? I have something interesting to say, do I? The apparent answer, in the case of childcare ratios, or the direction of educational policy, or feminist role models, or the isolating experience of infertility is yes, I do. (I have promised myself a Gove-free summer holidays. No mention on the blog of his appalling, ill-thought-through, evidence-free madness for six weeks. It’s going to be tough, very tough. Place your bets.)
I blog to let my children know how much I think about trying to meet their needs and wants. The whole sharenting debate had many bloggers (and facebookers) assessing the eventual impact on our children, as their lives are photographed and written about, recorded for posterity (or until all the servers simultaneously pack up). I focus, in those posts that make explicit mention of my children, on unpicking the journey we are making together. I try to show my absolute love for them and my own faltering endeavours to be a good enough mother. A form of therapy, this place can be.
I blog in order to practice the fine art of finding a voice and doing new things. I figure all new directions in life should involve using a muscle that has previously gone un-flexed. After only a few months I have already lost count of how many new things I have got involved in, found a passion for, discovered I can say and do and be. Before the blog I didn’t know I could create a picmonkey collage , or write serious commentary on policy and politics , or contribute to feminist debate , or write about painful personal experience . I didn’t know I could review a book . My hopes for this place grow all the time. In particular, I’ve used the experience of Britmums Live to put myself forward for working with brands and to learn about taking my writing to a new level. Sat alone at a machine it is easy to think, for example, that I am the zillionth person to have aspired to write a book , and that my competition in the global market place could not be more intense. Sat together in conference, hearing the experience of women and men just like me, I know I’m just as likely as any other to succeed.
So there’s my five reasons Spencer. And if it’s alright with you, I’m just gonna free flow a few more things out on to the digital page.
From the moment I arrived at BritMums Live on Friday, a stack of folk, speakers and otherwise, contributed yet more verbal ingredients to the bloggable mix swirling around my food-blender-brain. So, Lynne Parker, blogging is indeed my silent performance. And Kirsty Allsopp, your story of getting into TV via a chance working with Jonathon Friedland reminds me that the interconnectedness, the chance meetings that transform lives, are around the next corner, if our eyes are open. The butterfly is perpetually flapping its wings. Luigi Bonomi, I’m going to strive for that different newness, to tell a story that everyone wants to hear. I want every word I type to be a shreddie too, Lucy Cavendish. And Susan Greenfield, it was good to be reminded of my incredible good fortune to be living in an age and in a place where the luxury of wondering what to do with my life is available to me. I know now that ‘writing’ is what I am going to do with it. Plenty of writing. Paul Williams, my minimum viable product is here for all to see. And Lucy Mangan, I’ve carefully edited this post using the lens of reading it like I was a reader, just as you suggested.
Finally, (for emphasis)… I blog to start sentences with ‘I’. For eleven years I had a job writing where I was prohibited from committing that cardinal sin. And since I started the blog, I’ve thankfully charted my liberation from that particular dissatisfaction to my present fulfilment. Blogging has found me work beyond writing; I recently had cause, jokingly, to describe myself as a ‘Professional Tweeter’ and the guy I do some work for agreed! I blog now to maintain an online life too; it entitles me to meet with the glorious kaleidoscope that is the blogging collective. And get a lot of free pens. As I laptop-tappity-tap on the train home, the lyric of a Prince song resonates in my ears; “Everyone is looking for the Ladder”. I have found mine.
I am sucking the marrow and seizing the day.
