Why do you blog? Kelly @ Domestic Goddesque

1. What is your Blog Name/Url? (Twitter ID & Facebook Fan Page URL)

I am the Domestic Godd-esque and you can find me on my BLOG, on TWITTER (@domesticgoddesq) and on FACEBOOK

2.  What is your name/alias?

I’m actually Kelly, aspiring Domestic Goddess, wife to the DH, mother to Pocket Dictator and Dimples, her sidekick, and slave to the notorious Wonder Hound.

3.  How did you come up with your Blog Name?

It was literally the first title that popped into my head as I stared at the flashing cursor whilst Blogger demanded to know the name of my blog.

4.  When did you start blogging?

It feels like a lifetime ago: I was newly married, newly redundant and a new dog owner. In the four years since then I’ve moved house, moved blog hosts, had two children, replaced two cars and given up on the idea of work altogether since then

5.  Why did you start blogging?

Like I said, I was newly married and newly redundant. As we had the dog to consider, I couldn’t abandon her all day to go back to work in London, so I reinvented myself as a Girl Friday. I didn’t fully appreciate how alone you can feel working for yourself though, particularly when your husband works the long hours that mine does, so started the blog, more as a way of keeping myself busy than actually meeting people online. So I was surprised to find friends, and myself.

6.  Has blogging met your expectations so far?

It certainly has insofar as my aim, which was to keep myself busy. I have put it down and picked it up again, when life was so busy that I didn’t have anything left to offer the blogosphere, in much the same way that you would do with a familiar book. That I have been embraced and encouraged by an evolving community each time is more than I could have hoped for. Blogging in 2011 is better than I could have expected: more varied, interesting, inspiring, exciting, friendly, and innovative. It makes me desperate to stay part of it and see where it takes me.

7.  What has been your biggest challenge?

Life, Children, Post Natal Depression, all of which have conspired against me in the past and at points stopped me from blogging altogether. They are all still there, of course, but things seem, slowly, to be getting a little easier. Then, of course, there is the technology: this time around I am trying to master Twitter and StumbleUpon, climb my way up rankings and so on. It’s becoming more of a business and less of a past-time, something I could not have foreseen when it began.

8.  Share with us your blogging HIGHLIGHT and LOWLIGHT.

The highlights are daily: every time someone comments on a post, or tweets me (my twitter-base is entirely blog-related rather than real-life) I get such a thrill. So to be featured in a Daily, or a blog round-up, or to make the Tots 100, never mind being approached by PRs, is practically winning the Lottery.

The Lowlights? It’s all about frustration. I am frustrated by spam, by negative comments, by a lack of comments altogether. I raged at myself whilst trying to understand Twitter, figure out what Wikio is, and try to make sense of WordPress after a recent switch from blogger to self-hosting (thanks to a divine redesign by Violet Posy). I have been devastated this week when I fell from #103 to #395 in the Tots 100. I get mad trying to figure out how I can do more, write more, be more, yet also juggle my life. How does everyone else manage it and what is their secret?

9.  What do you hope to achieve through your blogging?

Of course, I’d love to find that I have the kind of writing style that sells books: to go from part-time blogger to full-time writer, or reviewer, or recipe-writer, but in truth, I’ve no idea. I do know that I’d like to achieve something.

10.  What has been your favourite post and why?

The answer to this question is, and will always be ‘my most recent post’. This is the simple truth: I couldn’t blog without the encouragement and support of my family, similar support in the form of comments and tweets from readers in the blogosphere and the deep sense of satisfaction I get from writing (and the crafting and baking that often precedes posting), reading and commenting.