confessions of a novice blogger

No pictures today, just some thoughts.

I have now been blogging for a good three months. So far, the experience is great but there are some  caveats that I have not thought about previously to starting my own blog:

• I had no idea that blogging is so time consuming! I spend a great deal of time writing posts and rewriting them, previewing the posts, making some more changes and adding photos. As a result I have been neglecting important things like housework or marking essays. I try not to give into the temptation to blog when I really should be looking after the kids.
• I am turning into an obsessive photographer. I take pictures of everything and everywhere, at the off chance that I might "need" this particular photo for a post. My family's collective sigh when I take a photo of my dinner is quite telling. I have been oogling nice big shiny cameras with one hundred functions on the internet, wondering if my latest obsession warrants such an exquisite gadget.
• I am obsessing about page views (half of them seem to be mine or those of some automated content scanning sites). This is a bit strange really because the main reason for writing this blog is for me and my family to remember the ups and downs of our life and as such, it shouldn't really bother me if nobody at all is reading these lines. Well, it does! I don't know what I was expecting? Queues of suitably impressed readers writing witty comments about my witty writing? Essentially, I am grateful for every single comment, even the one from my own near teenager.
• I have been lurking in the blog world background for years, reading blogs. Being a bit slow when it comes to innovative technologies and applications (or living with the fairies as some would put it), I was not really paying attention to the fact that one can actually subscribe to blogs, and follow favourite blogs. I have tried on occasion to leave a comment but somehow never managed to press the submit button. I have no excuse for either shortcoming.
• I am feeling like a complete fraud, because I have all of a sudden appeared out of nowhere fishing for my own followers and hoping for kind comments (or any actually). But at least I am now actually following blogs properly, and I am leaving comments, too. 
• All seems to fall into place quite naturally. Having worried for months what I want my blog to be about, what to reveal and what not,  and how these revelations would affect my family, it turns out that I worried for no good reason as I feel quite comfortable so far.
• My older kids love being talked about. This gives me the confidence to actually talk about the creatures that are my passion. Two of them at least. On the other hand, this mild exhibitionist behaviour is slightly disconcerting and I wonder if we need to review our policy on internet use based on trust rather than parental control.
• I haven't much said about the little ones. They are too small to have an opinion about the blog one way or other but I feel less comfortable talking about them because they are adopted and I vaguely worry that exposing them on the internet might cause problems.

Oh well, I've got this off my chest now. Time to move on. We'll see how this blog of mine develops. Have a great day and a great week!

Christina x