Friday, December 9, 2011

Blogging about bloggers' blogs

So I've been thinking lately about why I keep a blog. Is it to keep a record of when and what I do for myself? Is it just to keep myself writing consistently? Is it to let friends and family know that I haven't yet become a hopeless shut-in? Or is it to communicate with strangers who will be wowed by my subtle cynicism on big city living and ability topost photos that I didn't take? I think at this point, it is only some mix of the first three things. And I've decided I'm okay with that.

For a while, I'd entertained the idea that people I don't know would enjoy my thoughts (which I guess is the goal of any would-be writer). I think I'd hooked one for a while, but she drifted off around the same time that I stopped reading her blog (which probably had something to do with it.) The thing is, I read a number of blogs very faithfully and almost all of these blogs are from strangers or near strangers since only a handful of my friends really write. So I guess because I do this, it surprised me when strangers or near strangers didn't stumble on my blog, or stay when they did stumble.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with the rest of this post; however, it's one of my favorites of the "50 incredible animal photos taken in 2011" that has been circulating the Internet lately.

Consequently, I've been trying to figure out what it is that causes me to continue to read certain blogs, and I've come to a conclusion. The blogs I read regularly very in theme from food to television and even several Christian housewife blogs (more on that in a minute), and I realized that none of them are really terribly interesting or special, but that they all have one thing in common: they post daily. Well, if not daily, they post on a very strict schedule. I work in an office job and am in front of a computer with some downtime five days a week. I like having blogs that I can reliably check each morning and know that they will have new posts. That really is the entire draw.

On the subject of Christian housewife blogs (were we not on the subject? well, we are now!), I started noticing I was reading a number of these. It started with just a handful of Mormon mom blogs, and then has expanded to any number of conservative women writers. There's one in particular who is fairly political and routinely updates with views that are the antithesis of my own. The only thing she has written that I have ever agreed with is that people should probably eat less sugar and more whole foods. But for some reason, even when her anti-feminist views frustrate me, I still keep reading it daily. I guess it's just interesting to see how the other half lives. Most of my friends are also city-living, godless singles without kids so it's interesting to see another perspective on life.

Or maybe it's not interesting at all, and I only find it so because I'm here, predictably at my desk writing book captions and talking to sales reps while somewhere in Kansas City some woman I don't know is baking bread and homeschooling five children. After reading this particular, polarizing woman's blog for a while, she frequently talks about how great a housewife her daughter-in-law is and how Christian and feminine and submissive she is. She also mentioned that her daughter-in-law was writing a book, so I continued my voyeuristic stalking and discovered she too had a blog. I had assumed it would be along the same lines and that she would be a carbon copy of her mother-in-law, but the thing is, she's actually a fantastic writer, a really interesting person, and doesn't at all define herself solely by her faith or her husband or her job as a housewife, although all of these things do help inform her writing. Which is really neither here nor there, but it does remind me why I enjoy reading the blogs of strangers to begin with.

In the end, I guess none of my conclusions or musings are terribly helpful to me in my hopes of getting people I don't know to read because I have no interest in updating every day or in updating with something just for the sake of doing so. So I guess I'll stick with those loyal readers I do know and treat this blog as a way to keeping a record of what I do for myself, as well as for anyone else who cares to read them. Maybe it will evolve beyond that at some point, but for now, that's where we are, and I'm enjoying that.


6 comments:

  1. This post really needs some links :) If you don't want the people you're talking about to track down your blog and be sad you called them anti-feminist (although that's a pro in some circles) you can feel free to just e-mail them to me discreetly. Maybe you'll even get some interesting stumbled upon blogs in return....

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  2. I feel like half the time that I stumble onto a stay-at-home-mom blog, they're Mormon. They might not state it, but you can tell by things they say or pictures or something. Hehe.

    When I first started blogging I really wanted to have some readers and the idea of strangers stumbling onto my blog intrigued me too. Obviously my paranoia of a creeper looking at photos of Syd overcame said desire, because now my blog is private. Even though I know this means I get way fewer readers, I'm just treating my blog like a journal that I let my friends read. :)

    And I agree with Carolyn. I want links!

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  3. The only reason I didn't post links was because I didn't want them to track me back to my blog and read how much I stalk them. But then again, after that I'd have strangers! So here's a list of some of the blogs I read:

    The conservative woman who updates daily:
    http://lorialexander.blogspot.com/

    A Mormon mother who has a really cute baby (although not as cute as Sydney, Rachel) and dog:
    http://taza-and-husband.blogspot.com/

    This one updates every Friday reviewing episodes of Full House. I think he's hilarious:
    http://www.fullhousereviewed.com/

    This one doesn't update daily either, but just looking through the archives is worthwhile (well, except for Carolyn, I guess):
    http://www.grilledcheesesocial.com/

    There are a bunch more...but these are surprisingly the least embarrassing ones.

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  4. How do you have time for other blogs????

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  5. Hahaha I'm glad you think Sydney is cuter. But it's ok. I know there are other equally cute babies. :) Thanks for the links!

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  6. Thanks for the Full House blog. I'm so happy that there is someone who hated all those characters as much as we did and yet inexplicably watched the show anyway.

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