Three years ago I sat down with some vague ideas and set up a blog. It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t innovative, but it was functional and it did the job. I had my own tiny corner of the Internet. About six months later, with more of a clue about what I was doing, I bought my own domain and went self hosted. My little corner of the world wide web suddenly felt a bit more permanent and felt a bit more like it was mine.
Like my house, I can do what I want with it, paint it purple, get orange scatter cushions, I can have breakfast for dinner and dinner for breakfast. My house, my rules. My blog, my rules.
There are some things I will do and some things I won’t do. Other bloggers I know would make the same choices as me, some would be altogether different. That’s fine. Their blog, their rules.
There are nearly 10k parent bloggers in the UK. The opportunities for these bloggers are finite and competition can be fierce. It’s not in my nature to be competitive, and sometimes friendly competition can turn a bit nasty. I feel like I’m seeing more and more snarky tweets and bitchy Facebook posts about “other bloggers” and the way they manage their own blog. This creates an atmosphere I feel really uncomfortable with. People going out of their way to be mean because maybe they feel bigger and cleverer for putting another individual, or a group of “lesser” individuals down. If this was in school there’s a name for people who do that.
I have a very simplistic world view. I tend to look at the world and wonder why we can’t all just get on. At our very heart we are all human beings with other human beings to love and care for. A mother is a mother in Southampton or Syria, Ipswich or Iraq, Amersham or America. I told you it was almost naively simplistic.
Why can’t we all just get on? Why do some people look at another blogger and go out of their way to do them down? They are just another individual trying to scratch out a living by blogging. By doing someone down you’re not slagging off a massive multinational business, but a mum or dad struggling to juggle kids, a home, maybe a job and blogging. And we all know that blogging can be full time and full on.
It’s not up to me or you to say that one way is the right way and everything else is wrong, wrong, wrong. I bought and paid for my little corner of the internet, it’s mine and if I want to paint my walls purple then I will. If I want to run giveaways, do reviews, sponsored posts, endless blog posts about my bad back, silly things my son said to me, or if I want to use my own personal blog to just be a nice person then I will. No one is forcing anyone to read, follow or interact with me or any other blogger. If you don’t like it, don’t read it. Simple.
Vive la difference!
