BritMums Live! Guest Post- Yummy Mummy? Really?

Translation: Wanna play princesses? = Would you like to be my friend?

Remember when you were four years old? Making friends was as simple as handing the person next to you a tiara and saying “Wanna play princesses?”

But now, approaching 40 years old, it feels so much more complicated. Just catching someone’s eye throws up a host of questions: Do I say hello? Do I smile back? Maybe it was an accidental eye-catch, in which case maybe they won’t want to talk to me? Maybe I have my skirt tucked into my knickers and they are simply trying not to laugh….

When did making friends get so hard?

And then you have the internet. A place where it’s incredible easy to say hi and strike up a conversation without the need to even respond immediately. You can take your time with your answers, decide who to talk to (and who not) and not worry about your knickers one bit.Other than (hopefully) wearing some at the time.

In that manner, and with the added advantage of writing my blog, Yummy Mummy? Really? anonymously, I have made some friends in the blogosphere. Some on-line friends who haven’t seen my awful make-up technique and have no idea how overdue I am for a haircut. Though I suppose that should be fairly obvious from the blog! Oops!

But in less than 2 weeks my safe haven of impersonality will be shattered as I walk through the doors of the BritMums Live! 2012 conference.

I am ready to talk to folk (I will force myself to); but I am scared that I’ll be talking to someone for ages before working out who their online persona is and then appear rude. And I’m worried that they’ll somehow decide that, actually, on second thoughts, they’ll be de-friending me as soon as they get back to the laptop.

It’s not so much the making friends bit I’m worried about. It’s the losing friends.

And so I very much hope that fellow BritMums bloggers will be kind.

Though this blog has been active for three years now; it’s only recently joined the official blogging community, and it very much feels like a newbie. It, and I, don’t know the unwritten rules. There is probably etiquette I have no awareness of.

But I will go about making friends the way I always have. I will say hi, offer drinks (alcohol now, instead of juice) and biscuits, and ask what they are passionate about. It may be retro 80s films, murder mystery fiction or tap dancing rather than ‘Princesses’; but the principle is the same.

If you want to say hi before the event I’m on Twitter @ymummyreally. And please join my en-route Twitter party at 12noon on Friday 22^nd June at #onwaytobritmumslive.

See you there. (Tiaras at the ready!)

About Karin Joyce

Karin Joyce is the creator of Embrace Happy, an inspirational and motivational website where the focus is on celebrating the good in our lives every day. The Embrace Happy tagline is: Not every day is good but there is good in every day. Before starting Embrace Happy, Karin was one of the “old school” bloggers from the early days of what was then British Mummy Bloggers with her parenting blog Cafe Bebe. In between school runs, blogging and being a wife to Mark and Mum to Ella (6 1/2) and Sam (3), Karin also works as a freelance social media manager and consultant.