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It is a fact universally acknowledged that once blogging has caught you in its web, it's not that easy to escape.
I may not have posted for more than three months, indeed I had decided to retire gracefully from the blogosphere but I have made friends through this secret society, and last night I met up with three of them.
@themill, a near neighbour and similarly retired, and I travelled down the A1 together to a lovely pub where we met Hadriana's Treasures, who had made a 50-mile trip to be there. Expatmum had come the furthest - from Chicago - but on this evening, had just popped up the road from her mum's.
We talked about blogging, the seductive thrall it has, friends, family and oh, normal things.
Despite my lack of posting, I also speak to Gill and Karen regularly too on that other thief of time Facebook.
As The Eagles once said: "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave ..."
"There is frogspawn in the pond," said my mum today. "It's two days earlier than last year."
As I peered into the pool, I remembered that last year one of my first blog posts had been about fecund frogs in that said same pond. I checked back and realised I'd made my usual faux pas: I'd missed my poor blog's first birthday.
It shouldn't be surprised - I manage to do this with living entities as well as virtual ones. I always feel guilty when I do and people are always so nice about it. I wonder if inwardly, they are seething. I know I would be.
I wonder if my blog is too? Admittedly, I haven't been the greatest mother during the first year of its life. I almost commited infanticide during its first few weeks as I feared discovery. I then became overly-attentive and nurtured it at a pace I couldn't keep up. For a while, I neglected it completely as worrying about the Grey Mare devoured my available energy. I also neglected the friends I had made through it.
A year and a day on, I hope I'm starting to get the balance right.
I had big plans to be a better blogger this year. Following my ill-horse-induced hiatus, I started to pick up the threads in December, writing, visiting and generally settling back into the blogosphere. But it's already February and it's almost two weeks since I have blogged.
I blame Facebook. I joined in January, just to have a look. Initially, that's all I did. Then my sister joined and quickly became addicted. She badgered me about it and I started to play. Then I started to understand the attraction. Just like when I began blogging, almost a year ago, I discovered a new and - dare I say it - addictive world. Except Facebook wasn't a totally new world; it was peopled by lots of lost friends, colleagues and acquaintances. Suddenly, I was corresponding with people I hadn't seen in more than a decade and thinking about the fun I used to have; Friday afternoons in the pub that stretched into drunken evenings; sunny days when we sat, legs dangling out of first floor windows singing along with The Monkees; feeling filled with energy and enthusiasm.
Of course, it's inevitable I will compare that with how I feel now. Yes, I am quite content, but I am tired. I start to think - again - that I'm getting old. I look at the subject matter of my blogs so far this year and there is a slight theme emerging: worrying about my age. I still have a year and a half left in my thirties but I feel I am on the cusp betwixt young and old. I don't know how old you have to be for a mid-life crisis. Is it too early to buy a Harley Davidson?
Blogging, for me, is a rather furtive and anonymous business. The opinions I post are, I like to think, forthright, but the few images in which I appear are less obviously me. When I began blogging, I was utterly terrified someone I knew would read what I'd written and associate it with me. I thought that if people I knew in the 'real world' were aware of my blog, I may subconsciously temper my tantrums. Although I write for a living, I write about what other people are thinking or doing; blogging, like the abortive novel and a half I've written, is more personal. And I don't know how comfortable I am about people peering too closely.
I have a healthy respect for those who are happy to blog under their real names, illustrate their blogs with pictures of themselves and talk in depth about their friends and families. I couldn't do that: it would be akin to publishing the pages of a personal diary. If anyone ever read a diary I'd kept, I would be obliged to kill them.
So, there is a very small circle who associate the blog with the person. My brother and sister know, a fellow blogger up the road who I hope is now a friend, knows - and in the last week, two other friends have become aware of my extracurricular scribblings. Sitting in Starbucks drinking overpriced coffee last week, the first friend intimated that she was considering starting a blog; the second shocked me by announcing that she had one. I went home and read her blog, then sheepishly emailed to admit that I blogged too.
Last night, the first friend emailed me. She had found my blog and wanted to know why I hadn't told her about it. "Er, cos it's very embarrassing," I replied. Like an alcoholic or drug addict, I have an ever-so-slightly shameful but enjoyable secret. But I know she won't tell: she's got one now, too.
A little while ago, I received an email inviting me to take part in an interview with Bloginterviewer.com.
I checked out the site, and seeing a few familiar faces there, I tackled the questions. If you’re interested, you can see my interview here. You could even vote for me if you felt like it...
And watch out – it could be you next … I have nominated some of you ‘orrible lot to spill the beans as well!
I have secretly been coveting one of these pink badges for some time; I have felt like I did at primary school when everyone had superballs and I had to wait until the weekend for mum to get me one. A week is a long time when you're seven.
Now, however, I am replete: the lovely Keir Royale, with whom I share a background in broadcasting and an appreciation of David Bowie, has made me very happy by bestowing a Rockin' Blogger award upon me.
I am passing the honour on to Rilly Super and Gill - because they both give me the giggles.
It’s the weekend, therefore I must’ve been tagged (again).
This time, it’s courtesy of darling Chippy, who is getting his own back after I nabbed him last weekend.
I thought this blogging lark allowed one to be enigmatic. However, I feel my secrets are being chipped away, bit by bit…
This week’s eight random facts are:
1. I was born on the same day that Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones was buried. 3. I was expelled from play school. My mother was mortified.
4. The first single I bought was The Tide is High, by Blondie.
5. My favourite smell is the Grey Mare’s neck in summer.
6. I once told Rolf Harris to f*** off over the phone. I thought he was a colleague messing around. Fortunately, Mr Harris rang back and saw the funny side. 7. My first toe is longer than my big toe. Apparently that means I am of Viking stock.8. I refuse to do another tag until at least September.
Have you all got your gladrags on? Well I'll begin ...As promised, I am dishing out the Thoggers to those that asked for them (and some who didn't). In the order in which they were requested ...- The Grocer at Famous forAll Kinds of Wickedness.
- Boulmer Brider at Boulmer Birder.
- Chippy at Chipen Dale's Diary (a multi-Thogger winning blog).
- Mopsa at Ramblings.
- Brom at the Windsor Castle Hot Air Balloon Festival.
- Eurodog at Eurodog Training.
You may have noticed there are six, rather than five Thoggers there. Well, this is my blog and I am the totalitarian ruler of it, so I can do what I want. Therefore I am also issuing an honorary Thogger to the Welsh Anon, because he actually writes more on here than I do...So - you now have to copy the Thogger piccie and then nominate your own five thinking bloggers. Them's the rules...
I have never before won an award for my writing. There were only two prizes for English in my school the year I sat my A-levels; three of us achieved grade A. I have a memory like the proverbial elephant and I am still bitter about the snub (don’t think I’ve forgotten, you, either Johnny Morris for failing to pick out my picture in that ‘Fabulous Animals’ competition on the telly) …
Therefore, it is with great excitement that I wriggle into my ballgown, returned from my good friend Rilly at Strife in the North, and don my elbow length gloves (to cover the ingrained mud I cannot remove from under my fingernails at this time of year) to accept my Thogger from Chippy at Chipen Dale’s Diary.
I’d never heard of a Thogger until yesterday, but just like peer-voted awards are considered better than the Brits, I am honoured to be a recipient. However, being a curious creature I thought I’d try to find out what exactly I was being awarded. It seems the Thogger concept is a ‘meme’ – I had to look that one up as well – started by a blogger who wants everyone so honoured to link back to his blog via the award picture. One blogger I read was a bit sniffy and likened it to a chain letter, but I am not so mealy-mouthed and ungrateful. However, the originator’s ploy has been scuppered – the piccie I have doesn’t link anywhere.
I now have to award five Thoggers to bloggers who make me think. As I am still a very novice blogger and am living in a very incestuous bit of the blogosphere (Chip who chose me, as well as fellow recipients Rilly and the lovely Arthur Clewley’s Diary are on my sidebar), I am in rather a quandary as to whom to pick.
So – the first five bloggers to give me a good reason why they should also be recognised can have one. Any takers?
My blog is three weeks and one day old. It barely survived its first week; after a few days I considered committing infanticide. I got the heebie-jeebies that someone might actually read it and panicked about how that would make me feel.
It’s not that I mind people reading what I write: my job title says ‘writer’ and my CV is covered in ‘journalist’. Work writing is different though – it’s generally reportage or instruction, rather than opinion or a peek into the personality behind it. It’s also tailored to fit the needs of an audience.
Over the years straddling the change of century, I kept a diary. There were four volumes – proper A4, hard-backed, page-a-day tomes. I chronicled my ups and downs, I poured out my woes, gave nicknames to people and bitched like mad. It wasn’t written for anybody but me. Occasionally, I thought “I’ll use this misery or episode in a novel one day”, but I would have crucified – or at least removed the hands and tongue – of anyone who had read it.
My blog isn’t particularly soul-baring, and it isn’t tailored to an audience. I suppose it gives me a creative outlet and allows me to paint a different picture of my part of the world, a place that other bloggers and readers have glossed over with gloomy grey. It’s certainly having one positive effect – I’m ranting a little less in the real world than I was.
Isn't this marvellous?
The lovely Gill at The Dark Blonde blog did it for me after I admired her Sean begging for absinthe.
Gill is a poet, writer and digital artist and her blog has some fabulous stuff on it - lots of which seems to be absinthe inspired...
Go have a look.
