Who reads your blog? Do any members of your family read it? How do you feel about friends or neighbours following it?
My blog is public. I know some members of my family read it, also friends and others I know. However, I imagine to myself that they rarely bother, and even if they do, that this very post I’m writing is one they definitely wont read. It is, I know, denial of the highest order, but it is the only way I can write and press publish. Until that is I meet them, and they speak of something I have written, or they tell someone else whom we are speaking to, that I blog. Then my bubble is well and truly burst.
‘What do you blog about?’, is the question most non bloggers ask me, while looking at me as if I have something unidentified and not pleasant, stuck on my face. It is a question that always embarrasses me. I never know what to say. What do I blog about? ‘Nothing much, I answer, just whatever I am thinking about’. This answer usually leads to a sympathetic nodding of the head, accompanied by an ‘Oh’. Quite clearly most people don’t get it.
My own family tolerate my ‘hobby’. They watch as I sit typing away, and I suspect they think I’m a little bit touched. Sometimes, especially in the past year with the death of young Daniel, I type with tears pouring down my face, totally lost in what I am writing. That you might say is a good thing, but I am usually typing in the sitting room, with at least one of my children present watching television. They are oblivious to the idea I might be concentrating on what I’m doing, so regularly they sit chatting to me, expecting me to answer them, and take in every word they are saying.
My poor husband despairs of this blog. He initially lived in hope that I would quickly gather a following of millions. He imagined how we would cope with selling advertising space on it, and what lovely things we might get for free to review. Eighteen months later he has given up. This blog is a major disappointment to him, and I suspect in some ways, you my readers, are like a third person in our marriage.
As I said my blog is public, but it embarrasses me hugely whenever anyone refers to it, even close friends, especially if I have posted about my family. On one occasion last Summer I wrote a post called ‘My husband is so lucky he married me’. In it I described my other half getting really mad at me, so mad he left the house in a temper to go for a cycle. I shared that he should be grateful to me, because of me he is in great shape. The day after I posted this, a friend texted me to say she was laughing her head off as she had just passed him cycling along, and was wondering what I had done to upset him this time!
My children rarely read my blog, I think. But occasionally they do. One night I had written a post about my Dad on his birthday. He died over twenty years ago, and I was feeling a bit nostalgic. I had not told my children that day that it was his birthday, but sitting watching TV late that night the door opened. My eldest walked in and gave me a rare heartfelt hug. As she did so she said, ‘Sorry, I didn’t know’. It was lovely.
However my children reading also has it’s downfalls.
One evening I wrote a post for my own mom, thanking her for all she had done for me over the years. I had been reminded of all she did for me while mothering my own gang. A few days later my daughter came into the kitchen. ‘Lies, lies, it’s all lies’, she shouted, with a twinkle in her eye as she began to take out the ironing board. ‘What is?’, I replied, and then looking at the wrinkled top she had with her,I remembered my post. In it I had written,
‘When my daughter asks me where her blue top is,
and I say ‘I’ve just ironed it’,
because I knew she wanted to wear it out that night.
I say ‘Thank you’.
I began to laugh. Look at it’, she said, pointing to her top. ‘It’s blue and I’m going out tonight and you definitely have not ironed it’, she laughed.
Then there was last night.
For two days in a row, out of the blue I got a notification on wordpress, ‘tric liked your post’. At the time I was no where near my laptop, and if I was I certainly was not going to like my own posts. When it happened the second time, I wondered to myself, had someone stolen my identity on wordpress? Then last night I went into the kitchen where my other half was sitting with his laptop open. ‘I’m reading your blogs’, he said, as if I have more than one. I smiled as he had recently discovered I had made the Irish Blog Awards Finals, so I knew he was seeing what it was all about. ‘Yes, he said, I even ‘liked’ a couple of your posts the other day’. Mystery solved. He was reading my blog while logged in as me. I had to smile, but also tell him to log out or don’t like!
So while I love having a blog, and thoroughly enjoy writing it, sometimes when it is read by those close to home, it can be just a little bit embarrassing. However, to date it is not enough to make me stop. Not yet anyway.
Mind you who knows what I’ll write about tomorrow!
photo credit: lisaclarke via photopin cc
My thoughts on a page. 
Husbands… 😛
Yes I’m with you there! 🙂
Hi! I’d like to nominate you for the Sisterhood of Blogging Award! https://newgirlpress.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=170&action=edit&message=6&postpost=v2
This is so true. I’m glad it happens to other people.
And vice verse. It is lovely to be read, but sometimes…….
Some of my colleagues at work read my blog, but my wife doesn’t like computers, so only knows about what I’ve written when I read it to her.
That is a nice selective way of ‘sharing’ your blog! Do you mind your work colleagues reading?
Not at all. A couple of them in particular have been very supportive. I’m not one for chatting face to face much (poor social skills), so the blog has been one way to connect with them.
so funny and so true, but i keep on blogging ahead –
You have a huge following online. I’m not surprised you have people you know reading.
I sometimes wonder will I get used to it in time, or will I decide I can’t do it any more?
i have grown used to it, though there are awkward moments at times )
It’s all so true! I didn’t tell anyone about mine for months and I still get embarrassed when people mention it. And my blog isn’t even personal! I love that your husband liked your posts, my mother did the very same and I couldn’t work it out for ages. I was mortified that people might think I was liking my own stuff 🙂
Ah you and I will be able to smile knowingly when we see a post with a like from the writer.
I have two close friends (as in people who live near me not who I’ve met on wordpress) who read my blog. One loves my writing so isn’t a problem, the other one… is more complicated.
We are very close and have flirted with dating. She’s not a blogger, so doesn’t understand how you can become close with people you’ve never met. She calls me when I’ve posted something about my divorce and the emotional consequences I’ve been going through this past year. Usually it’s good, sometimes not so much. Sometimes she makes assumptions based on what I’ve written that I disagree with, but she doesn’t seem to believe. Gotta love complicated friendships. So it’s a double edged sword.
I know I’ve told you this before, but I have a “secret” blog I use from time to time when I don’t want my friends to read what I’ve written because there may be some hurt feelings or other consequences.
Oooh that’s complicated. You must be very good at believing they don’t read before you post.
I did occasionally think about creating a secret blog, but I am afraid I’d be discovered!
The one I worry about isn’t computer savvy so I’m not too concerned. =)
I knew my Aunty read my blog but I didn’t know anyone else in the family did until I did the 21 post and they all shared it and admitted they read it but just didn’t tell me, part of me was a bit miffed cause I had let myself get comfortable thinking they weren’t bothered lol. I am careful of what I out in my posts as I have younger siblings who read and honestly there’s stuff that I don’t think they should know about me but if be more then happy to share with the rest of the world lol it’s a funny thing!
Haha I too would quite happily share a lot with strangers but not with those close to home, especially those very close to home… as in, in my home! 🙂
I loved that series of posts on you at 21. Such a good idea.
Posted comment too soon! Did you finish that last one? I don’t remember reading it. If you did will you put up a link to them here?
I wrote the last one and my phone deleted it 😦 I have been working on it again this week but decided not to go into as much detail on the birth as I initially did as I can’t seem to get my head back into that state again, very emotionally draining. I will get it done though xx
Don’t force it. It will come. I look forward to reading it. Occasionally I too have deleted or ‘lost’ a post I’ve written. My difficulty rewriting it, was that is exactly what I was trying to do ‘rewrite’ that exact post. Moving on and writing a new one works quicker, and who knows maybe you’ll be happier with it.
I am amused by the idea of people I know reading it… In fact, I do this thing where I randomly go “Have you been on my blog?” to family/bf/friends and I pretend to get offended if they didn’t… I really love to be read, but I think it would make everything unpleasant if people who did me wrong and I don’t like read it. I wouldn’t like that…
I tend to blog less about my personal life do I guess that’s why 🙂
Also… “What do I blog about? ‘Nothing much, I answer, just whatever I am thinking about’. This answer usually leads to a sympathetic nodding of the head, accompanied by an ‘Oh’” I hate that Oh, like I just pooped or threw out the trash. It minimizes the meaning my blog has to me. I despise the “oh”.
Yes I totally understand you. The ‘Oh’. But they just don’t get it and I understand that. For many it makes no sense to take the time to write, to enjoy it and for what? At least bloggers have bloggers to enjoy and appreciate what they do.
Amen to that 😀
I find it funny and offensive that a friend of mine (not so close anymore) said something like, “As long as you are not bored”, when I told her I am making DIY items and blogging. That was appropriate sentence to her. -.-
I made fun of that many times now, specially when she made me feel like I was an unsuccessful when I was learning how to sew and then needed desperately my help because she thought anyone can do it and almost ruined a shirt. XD It was a sweet moment 😀
Blogging has so many advantages, any person with some sense of business and online marketing should know that. Not that we can make our blogs in gold, but they can open a lot of doors for us. 🙂
I’ve opened no doors yet, but a world of personal satisfaction in writing.
Your friend certainly didn’t get blogging and sounds like someone who is just a little bit judgmental. Glad you had a moment when she actually needed you.
It is weird that I don’t think she wants to come across like this and I think that she genuinely cares about me and my success, but she just doesn’t think about what she says and how it affects people. I think still she didn’t mean no harm, but in that comment her desire to minimize me was stronger than her friendship and care. So, in a way, she revealed her true self.
This is so true, same thing happens to me so I decided not to mind and just do it for me, maybe something can happen….
Maybe indeed. What would you love to happen? Have you been blogging long?
No one knows my true identity. I’m Batman.
Yes your gravatar is definitely distinctive. Lucky you.
yeah, except my sisters started posting my blog to their facebook pages lately. I’m feeling a little less Batmanish.
I had to laugh at “non bloggers ask me, while looking at me as if I have something unidentified and not pleasant, stuck on my face”….I get those looks when I mention that I write poetry…I call it the “oh look”.
My blog is “public” only in the sense that it would show up in online searches with tagging, etc. I don’t publicize it on my own facebook and I don’t twitter, hence the slow climb of followers. I only know 4 of my followers personally, but I appreciate them all. 🙂 I think it does get a wee bit complicated when family members read your work (and it is work….creative work!). If family or friends stumble upon my blog, I can’t control that, but I’d like to write freely without thinking about who I may rub the wrong way. I find this similar to the facebook status dilemma where you have to customize who sees it.
Keep writing, tric!!!
Thanks a mil I will. I didn’t really understand how facebook worked until I put the blog on it, and saw how many can see it without me sending it to them. As a result the chances of some member of my family seeing a post I’d rather they didn’t rose sharply.
Now I sometimes don’t post certain links on facebook so I can slightly limit who reads what I write, unless they get my posts via email.
I’m in now and it’s too late to change my mind. If I do decide too many know me, or I’m getting too stilted I’ll just have to begin another blog!
I suppose we can’t have it every way but somehow having our nearest and dearest reading our posts is a bit unnerving.
So much easier if one is blogging for business but, of course, that’s not half as close to the soul!
We’d be lost writing without soul. No, so far a good dose of denial has worked for me.
I’ve always shared the blog with Facebook friends, so I’ve always censored what I write… but being semi anonymous does mean that hopefully random acquaintances and wider world won’t know it’s me, and I like that 🙂
Funny it’s the closer friends and family that I fear. The rest of the world embarrasses me but not to the same degree.
Sometimes I don’t link my post on facebook for that reason.
Love your blog.
It may sound enormously cliched but those are hazards of the trade. That said, I seriously identify with much of those emotions, having been through amazingly similar dilemmas, as in, What do you blog about? and the inevitable Oh!, and rattling away at the keyboard in the living room with my wife and daughters talking to me. Many thanks for sharing.
Oh great it is good to know I am not alone. We are a strange bunch us bloggers. As for the ‘Oh’, I smile when I hear that. It amuses me and embarrasses me in equal measure.
Hubby is the only family member who has, from the first post, consistently read every post. The two middle-aged girls followed for about three months initially. My middle-aged son read the post I dedicated to him on Father’s Day, after I told him about it. The grandchildren, 24, 22, and 18, probably have forgotten that I even blog. When my 14-year-old graduated from middle-school in June of this year, I wrote about how impressed I was with him, his response via a text was “thnx.” The only one left is the five-year-old granddaughter, I’m hoping. Thank you for sharing this post. In it, I saw ME.
And in your reply I smiled, said snap regularly and saw ME,
except of course the loyal husband reading bit. 🙂
Yesterday, for the first time ever, someone I vaguely know told me they read my blog and they were enjoying it etc.. I didn’t know what to say! It is very strange. I think I’m happier when I think people can’t be bothered reading it. Lots of my family say ‘blogs’ too. 😉
You’re becoming famous! Finalist in the Irish Blog Awards. 🙂
Ha! I would make the rudest famous person… Like Rick Mayall, telling everyone to ‘feck off!’ 😉
I think we have the same type of husband… ! Half my friends and family don’t understand English so I can pretty much write what I want about them!! It’s funny because they usually “like” on Facebook, but I know they didn’t understand a word of what I wrote.
I know I have some family and friends that read my blog, but very few comment. I never know from one day to the next who is reading it and who isn’t. My most faithful family follower would be my baby girl. She is my biggest fan. My hubby has read a few, not sure how many…we rarely talk of it. I only blog about once a week…and I used to send out text messages to all my friends with a link to my blog so it would be easy for them to read. I thought that was a bit too self-centered and narcissistic, so I quit doing that. I have one faithful friend who reads and comments almost every time. I censor myself when it comes to my writing and always re-read and ruminate before posting. Primarily because what I write is for public view and in the past has caused me some heartache thus the reason I’m no longer on FB. I’ve been tempted to go back to the old way of doing things — journaling in a notebook..much more private and where I can say what I wanna say without worry.
My GG has never read my blog that I am aware of but who knows. He does get tired of me saying “Such and such commented on my blog post” or “I was reading this blog post today by such and such”. He always replies “But you don’t really know them do you? They are just whoever they say they are”. lol It’s an ongoing battle.
My son reads my blog. My mother used to read my blog until her computer died. My Tween reads my blog and has often left snarky comments that mysteriously disappear later (and it’s not me who deletes them either).
When my son had his issues early last month and I blogged about it, he posted the link to my blog on FB. I received a comment from my ex-MIL and my ex said something to my son. Now, I am careful when talking about people from my past that I don’t identify them in any way lol
so true – I once blogged a humorous post about my husband’s bad habit of dropping his clothes on the floor all over our bedroom – my brother called me from 3000 miles away wanting to talk to my hubbie to tease him about it and then when he dropped off our children at their grade school – the principal was supervising the yard and came over to his car to ask him if he really liked that his wife blogged about his annoying habits! He still has those annoying habits by the way – didn’t cure him!
Oh dear how embarrassing! I am mortified when anyone I know remarks in real life about my blog, although I don’t mind close friends saying something. My OH takes it all in his stride thankfully.