Bloggers and the Blogosphere - It's my blog and I'll do it my way!!!

I've had part of this sitting in my draft posts for awhile now and Momma Snail has given me the nudge I needed to finish it and put it out there.

What's the go with the bloggers leaving blog land of late? They've been dropping like flies. Everywhere I look there's yet another post about someone leaving their blog or opting out of their regular meme's or taking 'blogging vacations'.

Is it just the time of year, when everyone feels the pinch for time. Or is it just the pressure that we women folk place upon oursleves to always please others?

We start out with all good intentions, the blogging is fun, we meet some wonderful people out there in the blogosphere. Other women, mum's, just like us. Mum's with talent and really cool ideas, ideas they are happy to share with us. Blogging is fun, it connects us with other like minded people, or at least we think it does.

We're taking photo's of every little thing, we're doing projects with our kids because they'll be cool to blog about. We're 'thinking' of topics to blog about, what do our readers want to see/read? We're scheduling posts here there and everywhere.

We're watching our followers list grow and we're joining in with loads of other mum bloggers meme's, so that we might get a few more followers on our blogs!

Then all of sudden, sometimes it seems to be overnight, for others it happens gradually, the blog becomes a chore, a place of promises made that maybe we just can't or no longer want to keep. A place that more and more takes us away from our family, our children, our husband and our life....our real life.

Blogging isn't real life!

It needs to be kept in perspective. One's blog can quickly and easily creep up on you and before you know it it has taken over your life and your online blog friends are becoming more important than your real life friends and family. The need to keep up your posts so you don't lose readers is always on your mind and it is becoming bothersome.

Why? Why do we do this to ourselves. Keeping a blog is and can be a wonderful way to document one's journey (wherever they might be headed), to share with others, to learn from others, why do we insist on making it a chore?

Really how is it going to affect our real everday lives if we lose a reader here and there? What's going to happen to us if we don't commnet for a while on blogs we normally comment on? I mean really? Or what if we miss a week or two of a meme we take part in simply because for once we couldn't be bothered to take any photo's or we just wanted to enjoy the day with the kids without the worry of the camera.

Is it really all that bad?

Are our readers really not going to forgive us for that? If that were the case are those the sorts of people you would call a friend anyway?

For most of us when we started our blog it was for us, for a fun way to document what we get up to. It was a bonus that we could also log on and see what everyone else was getting up to too and even bigger bonus that we gleened some really neat ideas from other mums out there in the blogsphere.

Somewhere along the path of the blogging journey it stopped being about that. It stopped being an online journal, a diary, a record and started becoming a real live reality blog show ('cept we only show the perfect bits of our lives), where we were more concerned about our readers than anything else.

Yes your readers have some importance, but who is your blog for? Ask yourself that question. Who do you keep the blog for? I am sure that once you sit down and ponder this thought for a moment you'll quickly realise your answer.

Please hop on over and read this post by Momma Snail about keeping your blogging real, she has a way with words!

And remember - It's my blog and I'll do it my way!!!!! Are you singing it now? huh are you? LOL!