This past year, I took a step back from the blogging world, and decided to breathe. I decided that I am tired of 'blogging on eggshells' so to speak, so I set up a super secret blog. Anyone in my real life that is close to me, knows all about my blog. Therein lies the problem. So I have a completely anonymous super secret blog. Or two. These are a place where I can go to write about my frustrations, my peeves, and to let it all out.
Why do you need a secret blog you ask? Because my husband, my kids, my in-laws, my husband's entire ginormous family, my extended families(there are several by marriage), my friends, other bloggers and people I have never even met, occasionally read my blog. We all break out our brand spanking new blogs for the first time, proud to call ourselves bloggers. We start writing for various reasons, for an escape, a release, because we like to write, because it gives us stay at home moms a hobby or something to make us feel 'heard'. You become part of a silent sisterhood of bloggers. Our blogs pick up steam, we aspire to be the next 'BIG" blog, and dream of one day getting published. We design our blog's look, participate in or sponsor blog hops, write guest posts for other blogs, create our buttons, invest in one or more self help blog advice books, or bloggers how to guides, set up our Facebook fan pages, our blog's Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Bloglovin, and various and sundry other social media tie-in sites, get everything all set up and running smoothly, some even get published, make some bloggy friends, ... and BAM! Then it happens, writer's block.
Then we pick ourselves up and start writing again. Eventually we rediscover our voices. We get back into the rhythm of blogging. Then again, over time, we begin to find what once was so much fun, becomes monotonous again. We find ourselves slaves to the numbers, where the numbers are more important than what we actually have to say. How many views did this post get, how many comments did I get last week, so on and so forth until we lose sight of why we first started blogging.
Why did you start blogging? I started blogging after I became a stay at home mom, and to spend time with my sick mother(who passed four months after I started my blog in July of 2011). I used to entertain classrooms full of people on a daily basis, and now there was an audience of my mother, myself, and my two year old. So I needed to talk, to write, to vent. To get the "ME" out. I used to tell my funny kid stories to my classes, and now I tell them to my blog. I have always been a social person, and the slower pace of my newfound life took a lot of getting used to. I wrote because it was my outlet, my release. Then after my mother died, I started a blog about Grief, The Grief Chronicles
The other part of setting up a secret blog is that there is more than one side of me. I am by nature a people pleaser. I am the peacemaker of the family. I was raised a lady, and remain a lady. That being said, I also have a wicked sense of humor, a naughty side, and have been know to have quite the potty mouth when I step out without my child. We each have many roles in life. When you are setting up a blog, you must choose which persona you present to the public. For this blog, for example, I have chosen to be the cool mom, homeroom contact-person-ie 'mom', dutiful, fun loving, happy go lucky wife and mother, who gives you a peek into my at times airheaded, fun, crazy, less than perfect, wild and wonderful life. I do not choose to share all the other sides of me publicly on this blog. And trust me, there are many. So when I feel like not keeping my mouth shut, and writing a scathing, bitchy piece, I go to my super secret non-censored blog and voila! I feel all better!
Does it bother me that it is not wildly popular like this blog?(Well, to me 50,000+ is wildly popular in these here West by God Virginia hills) Nope, not at all! That means I don't have to promote it! And let's all be honest, it takes a lot of self promoting and time to rack up the numbers! SO I recommend that everyone has a super secret blog! I love mine! A blog free of scheduled in advance writing times, scheduled this and scheduled that! And only a handful of people who know of it's existence! A blog for just me! That being said, I love you guys! And you can't get rid of me!
