Blogging and I have had a bit of an on-off love affair over the past, oh boy, I guess it’s coming up to five years now.
I started flirting with this mini-love-of-my-life over at Vibewire, way back when I was just beginning to claw my way out of the foggy crevace that is life with two children under 2, and with performing only just beginning to enter my life, the contents were basically just musings on life. They were pretty damn personal actually, come to think of it, namely because I really had ZERO expectation that anybody would even take the time to read.
But then they did. And boy was I excited. In fact, my excitement soon turned to ‘obsession’. “How many readers will I get this week? Will mine be the most highly rated blog today? Why have I only got a few comments, last time I had more, did I do something wrong? Ooh, I must remember this conversation I’m having right now with friends, it would make SUCH A GREAT FREAKING BLOG ENTRY NOW PASS THE DAMN COMPUTER BEFORE I CHEW MY OWN GUMS OFF!”
In other words, you know, healthy.
"Dinner? Don't be stupid, child! Mummy's got to blog!"
Not long after that I moved over to my own little nest, where the birth of Comic Mummy took place at that great cyber-birthcentre, otherwise known as blogger. It was here that my addictive tendencies did ease somewhat, however their temporary surrender only made room for another dilemma to rear its ugly blogging head – that of caring way too much what other people thought.
Suddenly, I was worried about who exactly was reading this blog. Not in the “who are you?” way, but in the “I know who you are and hot damn now I’m freaking out about what YOU, dear Sir/Madam/Uncle Bob/person who knows my Mum, is going to be thinking of all this!”
In other words, say hello to my new friend, SELF-CENSORSHIP!
I tried to fight it. I tried to embrace it. But neither worked.
So…I quit.
Cold turkey.
No blogging at all.
And you know what? It felt like a huge relief.
Only then, like all real love affairs based on anything more than lust and/or a mutual love of partying, my former lover kept calling me. At 3 in the morning, drunk, from a phonebox in a dirty alley… “Jen, Jen…you know you want to blog…”
I avoided its calls. I returned its letters. But then, one day, I don’t know why, I don’t know how…it got me back.
Except this time, we decided to take it slow.
We decided to move here, to our own little domain, in a tokenistic move to start afresh.
And more importantly, I, yes I, Jenny, decided to keep it real.
And so here we are, trying again.
But this time, with a commitment to no more pandering, over-thinking or freaking out about who is and isn’t reading. This is just about me being myself, and if somebody doesn’t like that, then that really is okay. For the first time in my life (sorry to keep harping on and on about the car accident but it seriously was an extremely big event on the ‘I need to re-evaluate my life’ scale), I really am fine with the thought that not everybody on little ole Planet Earth is going to like me.
No, REALLY.
So yes, anyway, here’s to our past, and our reunion. May it be enduring, fulfilling and most importantly…REAL.
Gangstaz.
*Image courtesy of http://www.graphicsfairy.blogspot.com
