What's The Point of Blogging?
I've kept this blog pretty much to myself since beginning it 5 months ago, partly because I didn't know what it was for. Do I want other people to read it, am I doing it to become internet rich and famous, would it be like some of my other projects, something I begin then quickly lose interest in? I'm still not totally sure about it all, but the result of five months work is that if nothing else, I now have a beautiful keep-sake and journal of the first few months of motherhood and Cal's life. And when your brain is filled with the task of keeping a small human alive, it cruelly jettisons things like short term memories. When you look back at the first few crazy months of having a baby you can remember some of the more horrific or profound moments, but the little ones, the everyday thoughts and feelings seem to slip through the cracks. So I'm happy to have it. And slowly I've begun to share it, somewhat guiltily, with friends, but so far the response has been really positive and lovely.
A lot of blogs, especially the mama ones are about the small stuff, 'the mundane' is a term that's used quite a bit. I think women (including myself) often feel a compulsion to apologize for documenting it, even though they know that what they're doing is not small, that it's an all-consuming and Important Task. The occupation of mothering lends itself to blogging. Relief comes in 45 minute intervals, not long enough to write creatively, just long enough to jot down some of the chaos of feeling and mess that surrounds you at all times. I love reading other 'mama-blogs,' I love the sense of companionship they provide and of course I love a good snoop into someone else's life. I also think that being able to contribute to a collective history of the everyday is amazing. Never before has the 'mundane' been documented so thoroughly. We have no idea what parents lives were like 2000, or 250, years ago, because who would waste papyrus/paper on writing about a disastrous trip to the market with two screaming kids under the age of two. When people look back 800 years from now they'll be able to marvel at what a mother's life was like in 2012 at the beginning of the age of the Internet. How similar it is to theirs, and how different. How funny that women had to physically pick their kids up from school instead of just zapping them home! I like the idea that there are other mums out there who might stumble across my blog and think, oh cool - she does it like that too, or wow, that's what it's like to live in Amsterdam. But what really gives me a kick is imagining that for as long as the Internet exists, there'll be a record of this time that often feels so overwhelming, but that is really just a blip on the radar of human existence.
A lot of blogs, especially the mama ones are about the small stuff, 'the mundane' is a term that's used quite a bit. I think women (including myself) often feel a compulsion to apologize for documenting it, even though they know that what they're doing is not small, that it's an all-consuming and Important Task. The occupation of mothering lends itself to blogging. Relief comes in 45 minute intervals, not long enough to write creatively, just long enough to jot down some of the chaos of feeling and mess that surrounds you at all times. I love reading other 'mama-blogs,' I love the sense of companionship they provide and of course I love a good snoop into someone else's life. I also think that being able to contribute to a collective history of the everyday is amazing. Never before has the 'mundane' been documented so thoroughly. We have no idea what parents lives were like 2000, or 250, years ago, because who would waste papyrus/paper on writing about a disastrous trip to the market with two screaming kids under the age of two. When people look back 800 years from now they'll be able to marvel at what a mother's life was like in 2012 at the beginning of the age of the Internet. How similar it is to theirs, and how different. How funny that women had to physically pick their kids up from school instead of just zapping them home! I like the idea that there are other mums out there who might stumble across my blog and think, oh cool - she does it like that too, or wow, that's what it's like to live in Amsterdam. But what really gives me a kick is imagining that for as long as the Internet exists, there'll be a record of this time that often feels so overwhelming, but that is really just a blip on the radar of human existence.
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| Cal, clearly not as blown away by the profundity of blogging as me. |
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