Blogging Circles

This morning I woke up at some ungodly hour to the sound of scampering in the corridors.  We have recently changed all the floors to wood – with the only carpet being on the stairs (the budget didn’t stretch to a new staircase) and although it has helped brilliantly with cat and dog hair maintenance, it is noisy.  So it wasn’t the scampering scuttling noises that bothered me so much, more why it was happening at 4.30 am?

Leaving G happily snoring in bed, I donned my dressing gown and headed downstairs.  The dog was sitting at the foot of the stairs looking sheepish (in a Collie type of way) and very much awake.  Top Cat was sitting in the doorway of the kitchen, and Lap Cat was busy trying to post a live squeaking mouse into one of G’s work shoes. (I don’t blame the mouse for squeaking – there’s no way I would go near one of G’s work shoes either).

I’ve had a lot of practice at this mousing thing.  And I’ve learned that if you can grab the mouse by the tail and hold it upside down, it goes into a state of semi paralysis, which gives you just enough time to unlock the back door and deposit it safely into a flower bed for more adventures.  This mouse was no different, and Lap Cat charged after me, bellowing in frustration as the dog ran into the garden barking joyously.  It was 4.35 am.  I was awake, the pets were awake, and meanwhile everyone else slumbered peacefully. 



So what did I do?  Well, I watched a documentary on the shootings in the high school in Columbine on Channel 5+1 – I had had no idea there was a Channel 5+1 – and then the channel closed for the morning.  I flicked idly through the stations, wondering if I had time to crack into my Breaking Bad dvds, but knowing that I would get too caught up in them and still be sitting there when Little Man’s bedhead eventually appeared for breakfast.

So I decided to read some blogs.  And then I decided to comment on the ones that got my attention.  Let me get this right out there – I blog because I like to write, I am essentially a story teller, and if there are readers out there that want to read my stuff, then I will carry on telling my stories.  I cut my teeth on a little fun blog An Irish Dog when we got a puppy (and it still gets views today even though I haven’t written a post for a year), and branched into PantoMum when Little Man auditioned for a pantomime. I’m not really interested in accolades, awards or millions of accolytes hanging on my every word.  I’ve nothing against that, and if it comes with the advanced ages of blogging, or if I and my audience don’t get bored, then bring it on.  But I’m not really actively courting it all.  Really.

There are a number of blogging collectives out there – my favourite at the moment happens to be BritMums.  It is a friendly group who encourage new bloggers to join in with their activities.  I’ve always hated Jolly Joining In things, but even I have been seduced from time to time by their ‘linkys’ and competitions. And if you follow the founders on Twitter, they follow you back.  I like that personal touch, it costs them nothing, but makes a newbie happy.  And of course you can see how the old hands blog.
 

A while ago I wrote a tongue in cheek post about the Ma-fia, you know, those groups of women that form inner circles with ‘a common purpose’ – it may be football mums, aerobic mums, school car park mums.  You get that in blogging too.  This inner circle have won countless awards, they work hard and play hard.  They live and breathe the world of blogging, and reap the rewards.  Other bloggers circle around them, occasionally allowed to play or join in.  Others like me just watch and learn.  

Most of the inner circle, when approached directly through comments or contact on social media, are lovely and supportive.  One such lady is Alice Elliott.  Known through her multi award winning blog as The Fairy Blogmother, she writes and delivers helpful hints on how to write and promote your blog.  She recently published a post telling us why interaction on blogs was essential and urged us all to leave comments on other blogs, and more importantly to respond to those on ours.
 

Over the past two weeks I have left a few selective comments on other blogs.  I think carefully about what I say, as not only do you expose your views to the author, but to the worldwide web.  And in most cases it takes a bit of effort to comment – you have to leave your name, your email address and prove you are not a robot (I’m not joking). And so most of my readers comment on social media (I have a closed Facebook group for my blog, and have recently become a Twitter user), or if they are friends they simply tell me what they think.  I was at a dinner party once, and a lady came up to me and said, ‘I read your blog last night’, ‘Oooh’, I said, ‘Which post?’  She went a bit red, ‘All of them’, she said. ‘And the dog blog – I’ve subscribed by email to them both.’ It took her three hours. That’s dedication for you.

But back to the comments.  Following Alice’s advice I commented on some of the established bloggers' posts and those of new bloggers, or indeed, any blogger that took my fancy.  Alice, you may be surprised to hear that 3 out of 4 of the old hands didn’t acknowledge or respond to my comments.  Not even a smiley face.  Nada.  They responded to the more established bloggers' comments. That’s the sisterhood for you.

And the newer bloggers responded with joy via social media, on the blogs, Google Plus (still don’t get that) and anywhere they could get hold of me.  It was good to talk. A big shout out to Becky Wilkinson, Donna Wishart, and muslimmummies to name a few.

Of course, I welcome any comments on my blog – whether they are scribbled below, on social media or via carrier pigeon.  I will respond as soon as I can – but I warn you that I am strictly a Blog and Go chick. I have a life.  And I will probably be asleep by midday. But I will get back to you.  I promise.

On the Social

As a writer, marketer, and certainly as a mum, I have a peculiar fascination for social media.  This is a bit of a love-hate relationship.  For years I would look at the Facebook phenomenon and puzzle why everyone would be so interested in the lives of people they barely knew, and in some cases actively disliked.  I saw my personal friends fall in and out with respective virtual friends, some became depressed at the apparent golden lives of others, and some deliberately maintained a role as a voyeur – looking and judging without commenting.  As a slightly addictive and very quick-to-pen personality, I deliberately kept out of the social media loop for a long time, knowing that to commit word to type would mean that I had left an indelible print that may come back to haunt me for many years.

However, there comes a time when actually, as a parent, it is best that you know the danger that your kids face, rather than warn them ineffectually and hope that they don’t fall into the abyss created by social media.  This started when Eldest Son turned 13, and could now legally have a Facebook account like his friends had had for years.  Like many parents, I felt that there was only a certain amount of control that I could continue to have over my kids lives, and what better place to start than with social media – allowing him to have that freedom of voice, yet setting up administrative parameters and rules to be obeyed for his own safety, and ultimately legacy.

And so we joined Facebook together. And while I was at it I joined Twitter (@ruthym007) and had a brief flirtation with Pinterest, YouTube and Instagram.  During the course of my writing and work, I have looked at many social media sites, blogging sites, chat sites, community sites and interactive web sites and have found that there are enormous social e-groups out there – all willing to give you the benefit of their advice, whether or not you want it.  It becomes an all inclusive, all pervasive entity that sucks you in, whether you or not you want it.  And so you become silently embroiled in the anger of the mum from Fleet who has just been splashed by a 4x4 on the school run, and others join in with that fury and cite their own stories of puddle rage, and then the conversation turns to general ranting against all people who drive 4x4’s, and then the 4x4 drivers of the group start protesting that they are not all bad, and so on.  It can take hours of your life, or just seconds, your choice.

And this is what, essentially, the divide in social media is about.  It is a tool for communication that was not available to people of my age when we were growing up.  The most that we committed to on paper was the odd (in my case some very odd) letters, both personal and official and flirtation through an office fax.  Photos were three dimensional and kept in albums (or in my case plastic bags in the loft). Now emails can be forwarded to another circle at the press of a button, and anything on social media can be captured and resent to any corner of the world.  None of us can escape it – even if you are not on social media, a picture of you, no matter how old, can be flashed around the world in seconds.  And it’s the same with those old letters and flirtatious office faxes.  So what is the answer?  Well, the likelihood is that you will never know about it, unless someone mentions it, and for years I found myself amazed that everyone knew what I had been doing at the weekend courtesy of friends on social media.  At that point perhaps only 50% of my personal friends were on it, and we laughed at those who obsessively clicked and tapped their status updates wherever we went.  But that percentage has shifted, and two weeks ago I was out with a group of 8 mums, and only one was not on Facebook.

Sadly, I see more and more people of all ages sitting opposite or beside each other tapping away at their phones.  The art of communication it appears is electronic.  From a personal point of view I now make an enormous effort to leave my phone in my handbag and no longer place it on the table in a restaurant.  It is actually more difficult for me than it seems, but if someone has taken the time to meet me for a meal, it is the least that I can do.  And I don’t have that kind of relationship with virtual friends.

On the other hand, I saw the power of Twitter only last night. We have been party to enormous amounts of flooding around our area due to an unprecedented amount of continual rain.  A horse was trapped on a patch of land the size of a dining table. @Natasha_Herald tweeted <If you have a horse trailer please tweet>  It was retweeted 92 times, shared to Facebook  and several offers of help were produced in 20 minutes.  A newly built community that worked at electric speed.

Of course, in the meantime, Eldest Son simply uses Facebook as another communication tool, rather like his mobile or his Xbox.  When he came back from school last Friday with an extra pair of school shoes (I kid you not) and I was ranting and raving about having to phone or email around the list of parents, he simply put up a message on FB and within two minutes came downstairs to announce that they were Harry’s and he would give them to him on Monday. I was left twittering ineffectually.

Watching Benefits Street last night on television, about a street in which there is a preponderance of unemployed people living on the poverty line in social housing, I was struck by the sense of traditional community that they displayed, albeit in a rudimentary way.  But then again, how does that differ from the many social groups on-line? Joined together in a common cause, whether it is the dole, dancing, disease or dogs?  Perhaps rather than fighting the rise of social media, we should embrace it for what it is in all of its contradictions, superficial, helpful, distracting, empowering, depressing, meaningful, pointless – and above all malleable. Communities on social media do not replace the ones that we build in real life, but they can build you up when you are down with a simple <Like>, they can find you anything you want, they can advise, they can lecture.

And unlike Real Life, there is always an off button.