A Blogging Identity Crisis
I am, I suppose, a “Mommy Blogger.” When I started my blog, Moments of Exhilaration, last fall, my first post was entitled, simply enough, “Mommy Blogging!” After sporadically writing a book blog for a few months, I had realized that book reviews were a bit too limiting and I decided to jump right in to the mommy blogging frenzy.
In the beginning, I focused on fitting in to the genre of Mommy Blogging. I wrote about tips for traveling with a baby, first birthday parties, things I learned to do one-handed after having a baby, and playgroups. But even then I knew I wasn’t a crafts and recipes and “Life is awesome!” kind of blogger. I wrote about the fact that Baby Einstein videos are bad for babies, about the way that I worry about Adeline seeing NFL cheerleaders and learning negative gender stereotypes, and my longing for a place to call home. This was all within the first month.
As I wrote and wrote and struggled to find my voice, I found myself posting fewer “Mommy” posts and more “Mother” posts. I wrote less about the funny moments that come along with having a baby, and more about the frustrating, exhausting, boring, heart-breaking, depressing, isolating, and amazing moments that come along with having a baby. I worried that if I shared my true experience of motherhood I wouldn’t have very many readers. But instead, I gained more readers, and more comments, the more honest I was.
And then a funny thing happened. As Adeline got older and more independent, I started to find myself again. Because I’m not just a mother. I’m a writer, a reader, a photographer; I search for meaning, I seek a healthy way of life, I want to live fully and to my highest potential.
With that transition (or, rather, return to my own identity) I began to incorporate posts about writing, mindfulness, and identity. I began to post more and more of my photography, whether related to motherhood or not. And I even brought over my old book blog and started doing it all on my main blog.
So here I am. A blogger, yes. But a “Mommy Blogger”? I’m not so sure. But if I’m not a Mommy Blogger, then what am I? I peruse WordPress and I see Travel Bloggers, Book Bloggers, Recipe Bloggers, Photography Bloggers, Heath and Fitness Bloggers, Sports Bloggers, Gardening Bloggers, Art Bloggers, Music Bloggers, and, yes, Mommy Bloggers. But I don’t fit into any of those categories. Why do I feel the need to have a label, anyway? Can’t I just be a Blogger?
When I started blogging I read a lot of blogging advice columns and the back stories of successful blogs and the successful blogs themselves. I followed the advice and I modeled my blog on successful blogs that I liked. And everything I read and saw told me that I needed to find a niche and stick to it. This is, apparently, the only way to be truly successful.
I’m here to say: I’m done following the advice. All we can do in this life is be ourselves. I am not one niche. I am multifaceted and complex and I have many interests and passions. And so do you. So I’m starting a new category of bloggers: Identity Bloggers. I share my identity with my readers — the clear parts and the parts that I struggle with. I hope that my writing will entertain and enlighten and bring a sense of beauty to the world. But most of all, I hope it will help people learn more about themselves. About Identity.
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Totally with you.
I don’t know if I’m really the right person to comment, but why do what someone else is already doing? We can read their blog, if we want. You might as well let your uniqueness come out and be different from them and add variety to the WEB.