Why do I do it?

Thank you Kelly for asking me why I blog. You have the lovely Dulwich Mum to blame!

She got me into blogging – she emailed me one day last December and told me to follow the link to her blog in her email and get reading - I’ve been hooked on her trials and tribulations ever since. And then I thought “why don’t I start a blog myself?”. The subject matter was easy peasy – my friends and family have often said that if my life were a sit-com, no-one would believe it. Well, in the absence of a cast, crew and hand picked audience/can of laughter the next best thing was to write it all down.

My parents have always encouraged me to write and, over the years, I’ve sent off short stories a-plenty but none published (unless you count a story I read in one of my mum’s mags a year or so ago that was fairly reminiscent of a story I’d sent in to them a few months before – but I’m pretty sure that that was a pure coincidence). My blog is another way of getting myself “out there” and, like Kelly, I revel in the almost anonymous aspect of it all. In fact, out of all my friends and family (including David, whoops!) only Charlie is aware that I blog – I bit the bullet and told her about it. She read it and was generous in her comments which was a relief as I’d been worried that I’d either misrepresented her or offended her. This was only a few weeks ago and I’ve been writing this blog for nearly a year…..you never know, I might even tell David one day!

I’ve got a few regular readers (thank you, thank you!) and you just can’t beat the thrill of seeing your hit counter spool round, nor the buzz you get when someone has commented on your latest post. It really is quite heartwarming. And addictive. You get attached to your fellow bloggers too – I catch up with them daily or weekly but I always catch up with them and their lives and they provide so much inspiration – there are some wonderful, thought provoking bloggers out there.

So I write about my life, my experiences (however mundane), and the people in my life whom I love dearly – even if sometimes I’d like to shoot them. I’d like to think I’ve been fair with them, showing both their good and bad sides in an objective way and that they’d agree with my perception of them. For example, Katie’s only concern might be that I don’t stress enough that she has been forced to live in Rotherhithe in a tower block and that she didn’t actually choose to. My blog reflects my moods, gives me a free rein to whinge about things that bug me and, as I read back through older posts, shows me how I’ve changed, even in just such a short time. It’s giving me confidence to write what I feel without worrying about sanitising it – sometimes my “real” self appears, that gently bitchy side of me that I try to suppress verbally but allow myself to indulge in on the odd occasion in my blog.

I would ideally like to do a post-a-day but life isn’t like that is it? But then I think that if I did that, my posts would be boring and non-descript which I’d hate (although some might say they are already!) so I wait until something (or someone) grabs my attention and then put fingers to keyboard. With an inbuilt desire to please, I hope my blog makes for interesting reading – I write for myself, for others. If that makes any sense (it’s no coincidence that this blog has the word Rambling in the title).

Looking now at my “to-do” list, I sometimes wish for a quieter life……but then, what would I blog about?

So…..now I’m throwing down the gauntlet to Mutterings and Meanderings, Omega Mum and Landcroft House.