The brilliant thing about the parent blogging community is its diversity, we are many things. We are diarist and chroniclers, we are opinionated and informed, we share the useful, we are funny, we are poignant. We craft, we cook, we review. How many of us started out to be the blogger we are now?
Blogging is very present, very in the now. Visit a blog and the most recent post is what you find first. Blogging is about what we just did. What we are thinking about today. Seasonal recipes and crafts. How often do we delve into our blogging past, reflect on how far we’ve come, how we’ve change and evolved.
When I look back at my old posts they are longer, there are more memes, more linkys. Blogging has developed my photography and I own a better camera now. In my early posts, there are often no photos or tiny thumbnails which now look pointless, dwarfed amongst the text. Images are central to my blog these days, they are take up the full width of the post. Featured images creates the overall theme of the blog. I’ve long enjoyed taking photos but my interest has grown and developed because of the blog.
There are posts I’d forgotten and posts I’m still proud of. Like many bloggers part of my blog is a record of life and, like photos taken and uploaded to the computer, I don’t often look back.
Looking forward, I wonder how long my blog will exist and if there will come a point when my son doesn’t want to be on the internet. What we put on-line continues to grow exponentially. I don’t imagine a time when we put less on the world-wide web. I suspect the tide is impossible to turn, a life on-line life has become the normal. My son has class blogs, he has long been able to navigate around websites with ease. He is comfortable with the internet, it is part of his furniture. Now he is 6 and much of his life is school, a whole chunk of what he does every day is beyond me. As blog subject matter he is much less central than he was, our lives are less connected and as he gets bigger it seems only fair to feature him less. After all, he didn’t ask to be the main character of a blog and I think how he is represented on-line, as he gets older, should be more his choice than mine.
The evolution of my blog has been gradual, it’s taken me to unexpected places and other times I’ve planned the route a little more. Maybe, some day, I will stop and archive it for my son for the future. I hope the future him will be warmed by the record of us and my internet ramblings.
Do you ever take stock of your blogging journey, stop on the road and look back or look forwards? Has your blog changed? Has blogging changed you?
Ruth
Thursday 15th of May 2014
I think you've hit it spot on in your post. We start blogging for many different reasons and then it evolves into something fluid, that you tweak and constantly move from place to place, theme to theme. It becomes a journey both for you and your reader. My boys are older, and so I don't really talk about their personal lives, just how they have an impact on me, both as their mother, and as an observer. But even so, looking back on my posts I realise that they and we as a family have accomplished so much, and it serves as a record of what we've been through and where we've been. Will it continue - who knows, maybe one day I will hang up my Mummy Blogger shoes and become a Granny Blogger, and the stories will come full circle...
Gemma
Wednesday 4th of June 2014
I love the idea of full circle and perfectly captured, it is fluid. thank you for commenting.
Rachel - 3yearsandhome
Wednesday 30th of April 2014
I sometimes look back on my blog to see what we were up to a year or two ago from today. It serves as a back up to my increasingly failing memory (two kids, lack of sleep). I sometimes think about giving it all up but the record of the little moments in our lives is almost invaluable to me now.
Gemma
Wednesday 14th of May 2014
it's the little moments isn't it. I've forgotten so much of how my son was - possibility mine is a combination of age and lack of sleep!