A New Blogger

In June when I decided to start a blog, I wrote my first few posts without telling anyone about it. Because I’m self-conscious of my writing. I uploaded them to Twitter where I only know a handful of the people who follow me in the flesh, and it was comfortable. Isn’t that weird? I am comfortable with having strangers criticise me, or not read me, or ignore me, or unfollow me.

Since I moved to WordPress and got my own domain name, plus a Facebook page – all the real people in my life can now see what I write. They too can criticise me, not read me, or unfollow me .. or not follow me at all. And that is different because these are real people in my real life.

It’s a risk you take when you blog. You need to have very thick skin to put your life out in the public realm.

All of a sudden the way I think when I write has changed, I feel like I need to keep my language in check .. minimise the F words. I know my family read this, so I have to be careful of who I might upset. Religion is involved, I have to watch that too. Is it okay to have a gripe about my husband sometimes for fear of upsetting his family? Is it okay to say my kids irritate me a lot? The list goes on. Will people I personally know judge me on that?

These are things I now have to take into consideration which makes me ask the question – What is the point of having a personal blog if you can’t be yourself and speak your mind without fear of judgement or criticism? In my view there isn’t one.

I do argue with my husband, we do have the occasional big doozy of a fight. I do shout at my kids. I do like to get away from them from time to time. I do struggle with being a mother of four. I do act unreasonably sometimes. I do get irritated by my family sometimes. And I do sometimes fall in a heap and think ‘life’s too effing hard’ and then crawl into a shell until I feel better.

But all these things make me, me. And my blog is always going to be a reflection of me – not someone I want to be or who I want you, the reader, to think I am.

Which is scary.