I’m going to have to start paying Emily at Blue Dog Belle for post inspirations, because this is another one I owe her for. And Whitney, by virtue of Emily’s recommendation. Because like both of them, probably 90% of the people I know don’t know I blog.
I hate to cite Tumblr, but via
My family knows because we’re all social media geeks and we comment all over each other’s blogs – and yeah, we all blog. My dad blogs, my mom blogs, my sister blogs. A few of my friends who blog know that I blog and we comment all over each other’s blogs, as well. My husband knows that I blog because I’m always running topic ideas past him. I’ve shared it with a few other friends over social media.
I work with a lot of social media professionals in my side job and a lot of them have asked me why I don’t promote my blog more, photography friends who have asked why I don’t do more with it, and marketers who have asked me to review products, advertise things, and buy ad space have asked me why my blog hasn’t been made more commercial.
Because it’s my blog, and it hasn’t decided what it wants to be when it grows up. Frankly, it hasn’t decided if it’s going to grow up. And by that I mean it hasn’t decided if it’s going to go in a particular professional direction, or none at all, and just stay a hodgepodge of all things me.
I started this blog because I wanted to have a place to talk about my wedding so that I wouldn’t bore people to death talking about my wedding. The folks who visited here and left such kind comments and suggestions about my wedding planning hooked me on the blogging community. On top of that, I realized that writing every day, even if I wasn’t writing about things related to my technical journal articles, my book-in-progress, or anything else job related, really improved my writing. Those two things hooked me on blogging.
But this blog just hasn’t figured out what it wants to be!
I talk about food. I talk about fashion. I talk about math. I talk about science. I talk about fun stuff I’m doing. I talk about life in Army boots. I talk about me. It’s my blog, I can do that. But in order to be a good blog, a blog has to offer something to the readers. Promote a service, offer entertainment, deliver something of value, and I’d like to think I deliver the same joie de vivre I try to live my life with. But I just haven’t figured out how to shape it yet.
So here’s a confession: I am very self conscious about being a blogger.
I blog as a hobby more than anything approaching a profession. While that’s not a bad thing, so much of my life is lived in a “professional” sphere, on the conference circuit, consulting, presenting, teaching, performing analysis, briefing strategy, and so many other things that I feel like introducing my hobbies into it will be…judged, for lack of a better term. As in, “here’s a professional military analyst/consultant/engineer/whatever, and she blogs about that, but she also blogs about…food? Design? Home decorating? Romance? Dating advice?” Insert all the topics here that I blog about and, as Emily says in her blog, “in comes the judgment.”
I like being able to write about whatever I want. Women’s empowerment, relationships, military life, systems engineering, space, psychology, social media, you name it. Whatever enters my sphere usually ends up rattling around in my brain and comes out in this blog somewhere. I just haven’t grown a thick enough skin to put my opinions out there for the whole world, especially the people I interact with on a regular basis, to judge.
Maybe when I figure out what my blog wants to be when it grows up, I’ll put it out there more. But in the meantime, it’s going to be what it is. An outlet. Writing practice. A hobby. A piece of art. A sci-fi geek’s notes. A morphing recipe book. Whatever it wants to be.
I’d love to hear what you think about all of this. Do you openly claim and promote your blog? Or do you keep it to yourself. If you’ve made the transition, do you have any advice for folks who kind of like their blogs and might want to share it with folks, after a few tweaks? Or a lot of tweaks? Or a total and complete makeover? Or…
And here I go with the self consciousness.
KCS
I’m still blogging every day in May with Jenni at Story of My Life – and hundreds more! And yes, thanks to the power of scheduled posts, I’ll be blogging all this weekend, too! 
