I find the movie What About Bob? to be one of the greatest horror movies of all time. (And, apart from Se7en, quite possibly the only one I’ve ever seen). What could be scarier than the idea that any sane one of us could lose her mind? What if you went from knowing it all to drooling on your shirt? (or having someone else drool on your shirt?). Wait, wait, I think that happened right around the time I gave birth to Sally, and so, our family blog is rechristened to the sound of my self-centered wail, What about me?
This resolves, for now, another moral dilemma, that of: What kind of blog do I want to have? There are two kinds of mom blogs: family scrapbooks and parenting professionals plugs (be they paean or rant). Well, there’s probably a whole spectrum, but my moral dilemmas usually require a dichotomy.
Our blog till now has been the former–the title Johnson Family kind of gave that away. Many, many other moms/families have these types of blogs, and I think they fulfill a great need for Moms (especially SAHM) to connect with family and friends near and far.
You can click on the profile for many of these moms and read that their interests are “reading, crochet/sewing/cross-stitch, photography/decorating/crafting, gardening/organic/living off the land, cooking/vegan, writing/scrapbooking, Jane Austen novels and my kids” (sound familiar yet?). That’s great. I love all those things too; well, at least the ones I can do, so, hmmm, that cuts out the crochet…, photography…, and gardening… sets, so maybe it’s good that I’ve decided to expand in other directions.
The other mom blogs are like MommaBlogga, who helpfully compiled a list of 30 Popular Parent Bloggers. There’s a lot of great content in these blogs, but, I feel kind of icky reading them. Why? Because they are trying to sell me something or to get me to enter a contest of some sort. Not that I have anything against money (in fact, I could use a great deal more of it). And not that I have anything against seller-type people.
One of my favorite sisters is married to a Natural Born Salesman (and not the Willy Loman type, either, but the successful sort; there’s at least some romance in the pathetic figure of the failed salesman nearing the end of his life).
The appealing thing about these latter blogs is that they seem to spend a bit more time on the Why? and How? rather than just the What? When? and Who? I am interested in the Why (remember the eternal ? from A Room with a View?), but not in entering your contest or viewing your google ads. (or at least not in trying to ingratiate myself in the seemingly-incestuous ring of links and trackbacks and pingbacks and marketing schmooze–good thing I like being poor, eh?).
So, how to combine the two models. And not to lose what has been good about what this has been so far. My father-in-law warned me that I would regret losing Dick’s voice in our family scrapbook if I insisted on asserting ownership of this blog, and I would, if that were to happen. But one thing happened yesterday that made me see this again.
We (I) received our first not-specifically-invited-viewer comment. (There have also been lurking not-specifically-invited-viewers, but then, most of my family are lurkers rather than commenters). Grampa Dave, I will regret it if we never hear your voice in our family scrapbook, so get out there and comment! And Dick, you are hereby named the official special guest contributor, but today is the day I declare my independence.
Finally, a blog of my own.
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Not salesman, businessman. You don’t hear him on the phones! He knows how to hire the right people for the right jobs–how to surround himself with talented people! He also knows how to get good deals and biggest of all–he has the stomach to take risks. That’s why I think he’s successful.
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Admitting my ignorance here–I don’t understand what Adam being a salesman has to do with the rest of the post?
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I believe the thing that keeps a lot of people from commenting is just the fact that there’s no stopping once you start! After you comment you have to check back to see who commented on your comments.
I met up with a family friend I hadn’t seen for years and I told her how much I enjoyed reading and she said she ignores her kids too much when she reads, so she doesn’t read much. I told her I keep my sanity as a stay-at-home mom by reading. And, I was saying to myself, aren’t we allowed to ignore our kids just a little during the day? Just a little? Fortunately, my girls are playing nicely together and I can just spend time commenting on Shannon’s blog.
Hey, you have no pictures of our family! You’d think we never visited you in Egypt or Florida–oh, wait, we didn’t/haven’t. We need to get on an airplane!!!
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Hi Marcy,
when i say Adam is a salesman, i’m referring to his nature, not his level on the corporate ladder. he buys and sells stuff, and he hires (buys) people to do that for him. that’s great. i wish i could figure out how to do that in my own life; it is just so completely foreign to my nature (which is prob why i am poor; and i can pretend that i’m trying to be thoreau, but then i’d prob have to give up my minivan).
i mentioned adam (well, i was trying to be funny with the willy loman reference. geez, maybe i just think things are funny that no one else even remotely thinks are; oh well, it made me smile) because of those mom blogs that have all the ads and are basically businesses. and my doing my blog like that is just as foreign to my nature (prob to my detriment).
i think as long as we are home with the kids, we can do whatever we want!!
yes, you should come visit. too bad we’re not in that exotic of a locale anymore. nyc or cairo would’ve been more exciting.
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I am happy to see you claim ownership of this blog. I obviously haven’t contributed much to it. I think it’s important for everyone to have a blog.
The problem of focus on a blog does pose an interesting problem. A lot people want to have multiple themes for their blog. For example, Tara has her Tara Thinks blog and her family blog. I think having both be separate is a mistake, because it’s work enough to maintain one blog, much less two of them.
There are customization options that can help solve this. For example, you can restrict certain categories of posts from appearing on the home page. You can also exclude categories from feeds too. But if I wanted to write about a family event as a guest blogger (which is a common activity — guest blogging), I could do it discretely in a separate category.
Pretty soon our children will start blogs. And then their friends will have blogs. And then we’ll have an interesting little blogger family, all writing in our own spaces to our own readers and also keeping up on each others’ posts.
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Since we’ll probably have the kids with us when we do come visit, I’m glad you’re not in Egypt anymore! Give me Disney World any day!
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Shannon, A Room With A View is one of my all time favorite movies!!! That scene in the meadow, OMG! The most romantic scene ever!
When I first started my blog I was really careful about what I wrote, I knew my family would be reading it. Cassie said I should just be myself and who cares what people think. SO I started to write whatever I wanted, and got this HORRIBLE backlash of nastiness from Brad’s family members. Brad’s aunt even established a myspace page for the sole purpose of posting nasty comments on my blog, which is why I no longer allow public comments, which makes me sad, I hate censorship, but there you go. From that point on, anytime I said anything that could be construed as a negative someone in Brad’s family would think I was bashing them. For example, I once wrote about how rude and silly I think it is to wear a bluetooth device at all times, I had been to Virginia’s birthday party and her uncle was on it the whole time. I got an email from my SIL who thought I was dissing her, I didn’t even know she had a bluetooth! She lives in Arizona!
I had to explain to my in-laws that my blog is about my opinion, and my own wonderment of life in general, and that it is rather conceited of them to think I am always writing about them.
So I still basically blog whatever I want, but I include a lot of disclaimers and try to keep it as positive as possible.
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Okay, typo city, wish I could edit…
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hey Marie–i fixed a couple of typos (any others aren’t that noticeable, obviously).
thanks for the comment. it is certainly a struggle sometimes (for me!) to stay positive yet real, and true to your feelings yet not offend anyone. i agree that it is often a self-centeredness that sees insult everywhere.
on censorship–i hate when others censor me or censor things for me, but i believe quite strongly in self-censorship (esp. censorship of whatever media we consume).
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How funny! I’m watching “What About Bob?” right now, as I read your explanation of “What About Mom?”
Good luck to you!
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Hey, I just wanted to let you know I used a little snipit of this on my blog today. Here is where you are quoted: http://armywifemomof3.blogspot.com/2009/03/more-from-dick-and-jane.html
Thanks for saying it all just so well, that other’s have to steel your words just to get it right.
-Julia
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