Thursday 5 March 2009

Bigging up blogs

Blogging is exhausting. It all starts out so simply. A few words bashed out to make some space in your brain. Before you know it, you're replying to comments, making comments, adding blogrolls, linking, meme-ing, reading, reading, reading....often laughing so hard you have a small accident thanks to a non-existent pelvic floor. And sometimes you cry about things that are happening to other people who you don't know at all but can feel their pain from a thousand miles off.

What I love about it is that the people you meet in the blogosphere share real stuff. The kind of stuff that seldom gets discussed at the school gate or coffee mornings. Not even the kind of stuff you share with close real life friends (except after several bottles of wine and you don't really recall any of it in the morning anyway). And even if you did discuss these things in real life, you could never say it quite so eloquently. Blogs are often human poetry.

Take the list of great contributions at the latest Blog Carnival over at Thames Valley Mums. It's a fabulous array of reads that will knock the socks off most TV shows, magazines or even books (then again the books I read most often these days are Chip and Biff books).

It is remarkable how small the world is and how similar we all are. Some people say that blogging and social networking reduce our social skills and our ability to interact with people. That might be true in some regard, but I think it gives many people the chance to be more human. More real. More true to themselves than they ever might be in real life. And I don't see how that can be a bad thing.

Now, I've got some more reading to do...

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

I completely agree! The interaction in the Blogoshere is great, and wonderfully supportive. Blgging should be the new therapy!

I, too, am stuck with Chip, Biff and Kipper for my nightly reading!

justme said...

I agree too! Blogging, while time consuming and addictive, is also life enhancing and wonderful!

Mutter said...

Hello Home Office Mum, I've come your way via Nappy Valley. Love what you write about blogging, so true and so time consuming! Now I shall have to go and read all that you've written before....

Anonymous said...

Very true, and a lovely way to link into the carnival :)

Tim Atkinson said...

No wonder the daily papers are running scared, eh?

Home Office Mum said...

Rosie - glad it's not just me who has the chip/kipper/biff delights. It's taken me ages to figure out which one Biff was.

Justme - :-)

Wife in Hong Kong - nice of you to visit. If I can be cheeky, please also visit my other blog http://www.moretolifethanlaundry.com which needs as much supports as possible!


More than - thanks

The Dotterel - i wouldn't want to be a daily paper MD right about now

katyboo1 said...

Hear Hear.

Anonymous said...

I cannot believe how blogs so easily take over your life and how powerful they can be.
There is a big story in America at the moment about a painkiller advert which pitched itself at mums (specifically those who carry their baby in a sling on their back/front) and mums were so outraged at it and the insinuation that this was a bad thing that they blogged and Twittered about it and the firm has now had to pull the ad!
All power to the mums!

Anonymous said...

Very true!

I remember the Biff & Kipper books from when my brother (now 18) was at school.

Monika said...

Great post. When I moved to Italy and knew nobody at all I can't tell you how much being part of the blog community helped me!

Iota said...

Bravo. You sum it up perfectly.

It's like reading the Sunday papers, with all the bad bits and boring bits removed, and just the very best thoughtful feature writers left in. Feature writers who you come to know, because they share of themselves and their lives. And then of course they get to know you too.

Anonymous said...

Yes, very true. Well said.

TheOnlineStylist said...

With you all the way HMO but I shall be blaming you when Other Half asks for a divorce because I won't step away from the Mac! I aim to read this lot over the next few days!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the link. I actually haven't watched TV for ages, realising I'm spending more and more time on my laptop...