HAPPY EASTER TO YOU ALL!
Today my blog is eight years old. EIGHT YEARS OLD!! That is truly ancient in blog years. Blogs should be measured in the equivalent of dog years owing to the speed of progress required to stay on top of what is happening in the blogosphere. So that makes mine around sixty four years old. Officially it is a dinosaur. So, as it’s an anniversary, I turn to the pressures in the world of blogging these days and to the question of “to blog or not to blog.”
Blogs have come a long way since the early days and there is a whole new business that has grown up around it. I can’t really work out where they are all essentially going to end up – one conference I went to recently said that statistically the reading of blogs had dropped a few percent compared to last year as the millennials take over the internet. Then again, I was astounded to hear from some friends the other day that in order to get a job these days you have to note on your CV that you have a blog. Really? Why? There are around 175 million of the bloody things out there at the moment and one is being given birth to every two minutes. How are we supposed to make them stand out when everyone has a blog and nobody reads anything anymore? How to keep up with everything everyone has to say? When I started mine, there were about 25 women like me writing about their lives. It therefore managed to find a place to be heard. Now it is far more difficult.
If I had to write a report on how it is doing it would say:-
“Sadly it didn’t live up to it’s early promise. Not entirely sure why it’s bothering to hang on in there”.
I went to a blog conference last weekend and came back depressed. Blogs are for young people who know about how to manage SEO and analytics and Power Editor and who can put great pictures on Instagram and link to all the key people and write witty Tweets and be on LinkedIn AND Google + because even though nobody can see the point of it, they all understand that it helps with page rankings and Big Brother must be obeyed. We learnt how to get more page likes and followers by spending small amounts of money on advertising. Except that I didn’t learn anything because I was too busy wondering how I had found myself in a position whereby I apparently was going to have to massively up my game and work out how to run a multi-media branded company all by myself.
One workshop advised us how to improve our photography and I was so inspired that I spent almost one whole day of my Easter holiday trying to teach myself how to step away from the automatic button on my camera. But it’s harder than I thought and my photos are still shit.
I went to a lecture about video and learnt about how the 4K revolution is on it’s way (I hadn’t even heard of 4K), about live streaming and content planning and Final Cut and Adobe Premier software and 360 footage and frankly it made no difference because I don’t even know how to do a six second Instagram video without my phone telling me my fucking storage is full and to go and sort it out. Even a simple video can take 2 days to edit we were told – where am I going to find TWO DAYS?
There are so many gorgeous blogs out there these days that I spend much of my time drooling, feeling huge envy and rushing back to my little blog wondering how I can improve things. But the thing is, I love my blog and don’t want to have to up my game because that would make me deeply unhappy. I didn’t ever start it to make money or to get noticed. I started it as a means of annoying my children who up until then had hogged the computer and also as cheap form of counselling during the early days of my divorce.
It has served me well (and still annoys my children) and has managed to get me through some very dark days when I would otherwise have been behaving badly somewhere. So what I really need to remind myself about are the good things that it has given me. The friendships, the pleasure of writing, the opportunities to travel, the feedback. It is never going to compete with the gorgeous big girls and boys out there these days, nor should I want it to.
So whether it has a place in this fast paced world of ours, I care not. I love it and it still gives me great pleasure. The fact that others have enjoyed it too has been a massive bonus. As an online diary and a way of recording the ups and downs of parenting it has served it’s purpose. I have a wonderful record of so much that we’ve all enjoyed and been through together.
I should not want for more than that.
Therefore, until I can find the time to take myself off on a photography course I think it best if I stick to the automatic button on my camera and stop trying to take gorgeous photos of my food. I mean lets face it, I am not a foody so why even bother? In addition, I am going to stop taking photos of stuff that I do, because in the words of my daughter (don’t you just love kids) “mum, nobody cares”.
So I’m not going to try and make it more than it is. I should be rushing around taking pictures of my travels, but in all honesty, I haven’t gone anywhere but down the A3. This weekend has been a disaster on so many levels. I made few plans because my children wanted to hang out in London. I have seen them for about 5% of the time. On Friday morning my firstborn came in at 9am from a big night out and slept all day. My youngest only wants to be with his friends. My daughter was away with her uni friends but arrived back on Saturday morning at 2am. My son was downstairs with a few mates. I spent my time texting SHOUTY messages about keeping the noise down. Then at 5am my daughter’s boyfriend arrived and at 10am I spent an hour and a half trying to wake them all up and stuff them in my car to go and have lunch with my mother. They weren’t even excited about Easter Eggs. Too old for an egg hunt and frankly next year I’m going to go away and leave them all to it.
Today is Easter Monday and I am STILL sans enfant – they are all out and about. I have eaten too much chocolate because they’ve left their eggs lying about. Big mistake. For me.
So just as a reminder for the future, here is what I had for lunch because I can’t be bothered to cook anything when it’s just me:-
Here are my attempts to take cute photos of my cat – neither of which have worked at all:-
And here are my efforts to take pictures of flowers using the manual button. I don’t understand how the ISO and F numbers are supposed to work together and why most of my pictures came out blank. The portraits were blurry and frankly I give up because I also have realised I can’t actually tell the difference between a good photo and a shit one:-
An OK attempt at using the manual button:-
A picture on auto:-
Manual – supposedly to give it greater depth?
Really?
Auto – is that not better?
