What Bloggers Don't Tell You

I've had a crazy bout of writers block lately, what can I say? It's February (almost March!) and everyone gets gloomy around these parts in February. We haven't seen nice weather for months and our vitamin D levels are severely lacking. When you lose your happy, you lose your creativity!

So what do I do when I'm feeling blocked? I read other blogs. I read blogs that I love reading and I peep instagram fifty-seven times a day and I try to come up with one good idea. One good idea about something funny or interesting to write.

Here's what I thought about today, when reading my blogger buddies and stalking people on IG: Bloggers are Liars. That or they all lead fan-freaking-tastic lives where their children are always well-behaved and their clothes are perfect and every day they're shopping in thrift stores or planning outfits for #altsummit. I call shenanigans, people!

You know what I did yesterday? I didn't take off my pajamas until 3PM! I threatened to spank my child because he coloured on my bedroom carpet with lipstick when he was supposed to be napping (bloggers never tell you if they have to resort to spanking because at the end of the day it's not worth the backlash from know-it-all readers who weren't there to clean up your damn carpet!) and I looked like this. all. day.

The Real Housewives of Blogging

Sometimes blogging can be as much about a bloggers "real" life as McD's serves "real meat". Yes, there is meat in there, but they choose to focus on the beef in their burgers instead of the cow poop. (Yeah, look it up!) Even though we all know that, we eat it anyway and tell ourselves how delicious it is because we want to believe it's is what they're telling us it is.

Mommy Blogging is essentially the same thing. We see the tailored, styled version of mothering, parenting and children, you know why? Because people want to convince themselves that if Martha The Real Housewife of BlogLand can bake cookies, edit the photos from her last professional session, potty train a 9-month-old and make a handmade jewellery line to sell on etsy all in the same day (while keeping her adorable modern-shabby-chic house in perfect condition and her husband happy AND earning an income that rivals any modern job from her blog... of course!) mothering can't be that bad and we're just whiners.

Mothering is hard and sometimes those uber-creative mommy-types have bad days too. Sometimes they look like disheveled pieces of garbage, too. When we have posts to write that require photos (i.e. all of them) we get ourselves pretty, we wipe our kids faces (mostly) and we clean our damn houses. We're inviting people into our lives, but we're going to give them the best damn version of them we can. No one is trying to mislead anyone, it's not about trickery, it's about being human and feeling guilty because we can't do it all.

I'll tell you another secret: Most bloggers are perfectionists. How can you not be? Your blog is a picture of who you are, what you do and what you think. You want what people see to be an accurate (if somewhat stylized) version of who you are. If Oprah called me tomorrow and asked me if she could come hang with her camera crew and see what this whole Crawl The Line business is all about, you think I'm not gonna clean my house first?! Psht! I'm hiring a damn cleaning CREW and kicking my kids out until she arrives!

After filming a TV show for an entire season and seeing what its like "behind" the camera of reality television, it's easy to see not only that they do in fact alter reality to get a better "angle" or "audience" but why they do it. What's the point of filming a TV show and spending millions of dollars capturing "reality" if no one is going to watch it because it's not interesting? Creating a story is what sells it.

Same thing goes for blogging... it is reality.. it is our lives, it's just a slightly altered version, tailored to be interesting and captivating. No one is going to care if I spent all day designing business cards and drinking coffee in my underpants, but they do care when my kids are looking super adorbs in matching bowties and we're going somewhere and doing something.

There's really no point in pulling back this here curtain other than to say lately I feel like crud and don't feel like putting on any makeup or creating a captivating story for you guys. Part of being a blogger (or being on TV for that matter) is also accepting that which you cannot change about yourself, about others, about ALL the things.

Now, excuse me while I go threaten to put my kids on a time out if they don't get away from the damn TV!


I'm sorry and You're Welcome!
C