I think they call it a blogdentity crisis. It all felt a bit icky for a while. Heavy, you know? Who was I blogging for? Why am I blogging at all. And everything in between. All I can say is whenever I sat down to blog everything rebelled. I can’t say I’m wholly ‘here’ right now either. It’s an odd phenomenon - blogging.
On the one hand you have reality, your reality, and on the other you have the persona, the edited version that you present to the world. I think most people understand that with a blog what you get is the shiny edited version (like polite society); the persona rather than the person. And that’s fine. I don’t mind doing warts and all posts but most of what you get here is the person I want to be, rather than the person I am most of the time. And I think I needed to do real life without blog for a while.
Sometimes you have to make sure there is a person behind the persona and with being pulled in so many directions at once it is good to hunker down with the important people in your life to pull it all together again once in a while. It’s good to return to base and have a little cooling off period about all sorts of things.
I have mostly been turned off blogging by corporate blogs - the Trademark shiny blogs who are less about person or persona and more about selling.
But I have also returned to blogging because of some truly beautiful and inspirational blogs that revived my spirit and made me smile with pleasure, page after page. Somehow they managed to present a persona and still keep it real. And it was all very reviving.
I’m not quite sure why I came to blogging, or why I stay with blogging. Partly I hope to keep a record of my life and my growth, and partly to make connections. Partly, I admit, I like the reality I portray on blog more than I like the reality I live, and sometimes the shiny edited version can stop me tearing my hair out - when I concentrate on the beauty and the good things to come out of a day rather than the negative (and all too real) me. Selective memory or survival technique? Perhaps both.
I admit I shout a lot at my children; I make them cry; I am waspish and curlish and I scream like a fishwife on a hissy fit. That is the everyday reality of Me.
But then there is the other stuff too. The person I aspire to be; the person I strive to be; the Mama I wake up everyday being before my children give me brain damage halfway down the stairs - the Mama I hope, even with the nagging and yapping, my children will remember me as trying very hard to be out of sheer love. It is that that I want to document and remember - and it is the aspirations towards beauty in all its guises that I want to capture.
So. With all these reality checks playing around in my mind I think I am ready to re-open this thing back up.
I’ll leave you with some snapshots of our time together this week. Coffee and picnics in the garden while everything around us reaches for the sun and comes full bloom, reaching it’s potential before our grateful eyes.
xx
salamou alaikoum,
thanks that you are back! I do understand so well and share all your thoughts about blogging.
but I think your blog is a good mixture about persona and also about a real person behind. anyway, I like it!
may Allah bless you.
Ah, jazakillah. You came back! May Allah bless you too.
xx
asalamoaleykum, reading other people’s blogs, even if of course cannot portray the total reality, can give little or even large smiles of reassurance from time to time. (Like how i always seem to have different coloured lids on my anywayup cups;)).
self self self, but have you given any thought to ME?
The problem is Q, is that your blog is so unique, there really isn’t anything out there like what you make. And I really like what you make and the way you make it.
When we feel like absolute horrors because of the way we are this or that with our kids, it must be worth realising how very far we have come. Your blogs have shown you going from leaps to bounds, it’s like watching one of those fast framed pics of a flower unfolding. I don’t know why your development is so intense or so rapid, but perhaps in all of this hardcore reality of life you are so deep in it that it is not immediately obvious how ‘well’ you are doing.
Considering.
LOL. Nah, only teasing you in a gentle way xxx
I’ve not met a mother yet who has not raised her voice to her children. Even the perfect mamas with their wholesomeness snap from time to time. We don’t want to be fishwives but it’s in our genes somewhere along the line.
Taking blog breaks gives us time to know where we are at. But I love bloggin too, it’s a really good way to connect with eachother.
UmmSuhayb: different coloured lids on anywayup cups is acceptable and jaunty. You must pity my kids who wear odd socks.
So long as we portray real life then blogs can be reassuring and inspirational. I think I overdosed on perfectionist blogs that actually present not a reality or inspiration but simply a trademark.
Oh dear. If I am coming across as doing well my blog is a lie EF. But knowing that we all act like fishwives is, again, reassuring.
Odd socks? Odd lids? Pah! Be gone with you, amateurs - odd PJs with constant holes in the knees and allowing my children to wear each other’s clothes inside out and back to front (true) in public on a day when I am ‘with it’ is my reality…
*sigh*
Fishwives ? Oh yes you could hear me down the road today. Mind you my blog isn’t so rose tinted lately lol. Glad you are back - I always worry I have annoyed someone when they disappear. At least your kids p.j’s dont have huge holes in the bum as mine do
Oh sorry that was me. I forgot I was logged into word press.
blogging is weird like that…i always feel that temptation to pull the plug or withdraw and then i find the balance i started it all for in the beginning. I think for a lot of bloggers there’s that part of us we want out in the world and those that we have developed relationships with but we don’t want all of us out there which i feel is totally natural to not want to share all of ourselves with random people. I don’t think that made any sense so i’ll just say “glad you’re back!” I really look forward to reading your blog and it’s because you are real and you do have warts and do we all. I like those blogs that i feel a kinship with (crafty momma muslimahs-or not- complete with warts).
That blanky is loving those toes!
Even though I don’t blog too much myself,truly it can be said that blogging is what makes my world go round.I love reading blogs.life in a way,is taking a whole dimension. but for many the Internet has become a serious problem.They are the net addicts (day in day out ,we are stuck to our PC’s) he!he!he!. Really it is a nice blog
Wish you well
Ruth, no not bum … yet but eldest has gone through twenty TWENTY pairs of PJ bottoms… is it me??
Thankyou people. I’m glad you took the time to welcome me back
xx
no Q, PJ bottoms and boys= holes in knees/ anywhere else (due to excessive driving around of toy cars/ vehicles on floors?), so they end up being PJ shorts (after a brush with some scissors) in our house until complete disintegration. I still havent plucked up courage to make some myself..
EF- odd socks no probs, just once I sent one of the boys to nursery wearing some and one of the lil classmates straight away announced their observation in a negative way to the other children, that I try to avoid it on nursery days (although they may turn up in their bro’s oversized ones)
But Summer is a great time, no socks required.
Hey, you’re back! (delurking here!)
I understand the problem you had, I’m the queen of blog-quitting and starting (I have been blogging since 2001, but there are no records of that because I quit and deleted everything about six times - or even more often.)
I agree, the best and most inspiring blogs are the ones that emphasize the positive things, but are realistic the same time. Finding that balance in my own blog is hard sometimes. Anyway, glad you decided to blog again.
I don’t usually read any blogs, well maybe just one, but today i was reading yours and i am glad, i am not the only one, who shouts at their kids, or lets them wear their clothes inside out (if it fit they’d wear it upside down too!).
so glad i read yours today and found all these ppl whose kids wear the holy pjs!
you should see my dd’s hair (someitmes it can be really out there, is that really bad?) its dry so it tends to stand up by it self sometimes, like 5 mins after we leave the house!
takecare
love the blog
Geertrude, I have my fair share of deleted blogs
so this time I switched down rather than delete the whole thing. I’m growing up 
Natasha, thankyou forb your comment, although my DS has actually tried to wear pants upside down before
My sons have PJ’s with MASSIVE and many holes in and most of all four of their clothes have stains. Sigh.
And I delete my blogs. Still.
I’ve got a loooong way to go ,)))
Beautiful post masha’Allah, very grounding and delicate. I use the word delicate to mean something different to the dictionary def. maybe, but, I guess I mean it like a gentle breeze. Hope that makes sense.
xx