A few old school “mommy bloggers” are pondering the state of blogging as they’ve come to know it. It’s become quite the recurring meme for some bloggers over the years.

BusyMom:

Bloggers are a group, and in most groups, people are always going to vie to be seen as the head of the group or position themselves as an expert, someone is always going to go outside (and suffer the consequences of) the established “norm”, while others are going to carefully go along with the majority.

Mommybloggers don’t have a monopoly on group dynamics.

In fact, if had I had to guess, most blogging communities probably don’t understand “all the new people”, russet potato bloggers wonder if the red potato bloggers are half baked, and the tin foil bloggers question if the Saran Wrap bloggers are transparent enough.

Petroville:

Facebook and Twitter have been more engaging to me than the blogosphere lately. After taking a step back, not posting for a while, choosing not to attend the conferences this go round, all have given me a bit of added perspective. Whoever I thought I was out here - whoever I was trying to be - maybe I wasn’t. I’m just a mom, a woman trying to find her voice. Somewhere along the way, I think I got caught up in trying to be popular rather than just being me - and that’s bullshit.

This Full House:

Like, how the word “momblogger” is making me feel like a total LOSER! Make no mistake, I am very proud of my blog…really, it’s like I’m birthing another child, over and over again…but, I don’t start each entry with the idea that THIS WILL BE THE BLOG POST THAT SAVES THE WORLD (although, it would be nice) or, have any illusions that everyone’s going to love absolutely everything I say, write, and/or do.

Mommy Needs Coffee:

I have been talking to friends of mine who have been at this for a few years as well and they have felt it, too.  And it isn’t just burn out.  I don’t think it is all about how much things have changed either.  Though, that is a lot of it.  Back “in the day” when some of us started blogging it was story telling and commenting and hanging out on each others’ blogs to share our lives and stories.  SEO?  What is the world was that?  Reviews?  That was just when we laughed at someone else’s stupid typos in a post.   Blogging trips?  That was when you went to another blogger’s home to visit.  It was just different.  It’s not like I am sitting in a rocking chair talking about the good old days and yelling at the new bloggers to get off of my lawn.  Change happens.  “Blogging just isn’t as easy as it used to be.”

I’ve seen two kinds of bloggers in the nearly 10 years I’ve blogged both personally and professionally. One writes for all the wrong reasons only to burn out and give up on themselves, their readers and sometimes their own colleagues. The other creatively wanders in and out of giving voice to their passion and is careful not to get caught up in the tides of validation and criticism. One of these groups will still be around in five years sharing their life passion even if it’s no longer on a blog.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 27th, 2009 at 4:00 pm and is filed under Blogs, Family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.