The original post by Natalie the Singingfool can be found at Blogging: Wrangling a Strange Beast
I am not the first person to make this observation, but blogging and writing are two distinctive pursuits. I am a trained writer. I know what I’m doing with the word things and the grammar-ness, for the most part, even though there is always room for improvement.
Blogging, on the other hand, is an entirely different beast. It is social media – the key word in that descriptor being SOCIAL. I have never been very adept at the art of people skills or marketing myself, so this has been the most difficult, emotionally explosive part of blogging for me. I would rather hide in my office with strong coffee for company and tap anonymously on keys than promote myself. In that way, I am well suited for the life of a writer: but a blogger…?
Lord knows I try to put myself out there, but let’s be real: I am awkward. While I simultaneously think I’m pretty fab, this does not mean I have the delusion impression that other people necessarily share the same opinion. If they did, I’d be honing my craft for a second Oscar nomination in a major motion picture about how a brilliant scientist (played by me) saves the world from global warming and killer arachnids. No, I am more like the girl you’ve met twelve times but can never remember her name…
Nothing about me is magnetic, unless you’ve been trapped away from humankind in a dank cell for a few weeks living on pickled eggs with nothing to read but back issues of In Touch magazine. Then I’m pretty amazing.
That said, I am a far cry from the most popular blogger. In this way, my experience with blogging has been a sort-of replay of high school, where I was neither sought out nor pelted with vegetables in the halls. I had a small group of friends so I did’t eat alone at lunch, but no one banged down my door to invite me to the latest rager (or whatever the kids are calling parties these-here days).
If blogging is so challenging for a timid lass like myself, why do I do it? Well, probably for the same reasons I finished high school:
- Because I can
- Because I’d regret it if I didn’t – no one wants to grow up to be the Dude
- It was actually pretty fun, because I learned how to indulge my goofiness (i.e., taking theater classes) without caring about others’ judgement
I have a sweater that kind of looks like this bathrobe…
All joking aside though, I have met some very wonderfully supportive people since I started blogging, which was an unexpected bonus to this whole madcap experiment. They let me sit with them at lunch and sometimes, they invite me over on Friday nights to watch the latest Paul Walker movie.
What? Paul Walker was big when I was in high school. Shut up.
So though I’ll probably never break social media records, that was never the goal to begin with; the goal was to not end up a drunken bowler who can’t find a rug to tie the room together…
Crisis averted, huh?
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