Some of my friends who read this blog regularly (I love them for that) may be wondering how this little huge blog challenge I’m doing is going. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, click that little button on the right (under the subscribe button) and you’ll find out what I’m talking about.
Well…technically today is day 29 and I’m working on Day 25. I’m behind. But I’m not quitting- just catching up. Whew! It’s been a challenge in many ways, but mostly just keeping tabs on everything in addition to daily life has been the biggest one. I did decide to switch my domain over, revamp the theme a bit, and do some other background stuff that no one will ever see that took a ton of time. But I’m proud of doing this challenge- it pushed me just like my trainer pushed me in my pre-marriage & mommy days.
Day 25 Day’s task is to ask a question, and my question is a simple one: how do you stay true to yourself and who you are? I’ve seen lots of blog moms post about this lately. Blogging can give readers a sense that people are more than they are. Take Design Mom, an extremely successful woman with 6, count ’em, 6 kids (who are gorgeous). I was reading her blog, clicking page after page, oohing and aaahhhing, and thinking, “Oh my LORD this woman is Super Woman!” Then I started getting down on my own situation- my house isn’t perfect enough, my wardrobe isn’t cool enough, I’m not wearing enough makeup and I certainly haven’t gotten far enough with my crafting yet. Then I clicked Design Mom’s FAQ page and found this little tidbit, which really resonated with me:
“…And the answer is: I don’t. Not even close. In fact, on some level, I believe the whole idea is a myth. If my blog is really good on a given week, then you can bet my house is a wreck. If my blog seems a little bleh, then it’s guaranteed we’ve got a lot going on at home. If you know me in real life, then you know I work in my pjs as often as possible and that I’m a very typical mom. As each new child joins our family, I have to learn to be a more flexible and lower my expectations another notch.
…One more thing. Please keep in mind that on this blog I attempt to keep things very positive and showcase the best and prettiest things happening in my life. That doesn’t mean there aren’t bad days and failed projects and lost tempers. At the end of the day, blogs are a show. I suppose that’s why we like them so much.”
It made me feel so much better. And it got me to thinking that blogging, while amazing, is misleading. We see all of these wonderful things, but as Gabrielle points out, people rarely blog about the real stuff. Blogging is, for me, one way to see the good things in my life, and to make good things in my life. It would be easy, though, to get lost in comparison and start feeling like you don’t measure up.
So, how do you stay true to yourself? Do you limit your blog-self to a certain amount of blogging per day? Do you ride the different waves of life and take it as it comes or plan it out to keep it sane?
For me, I try to remember that while I truly love this new blog (and have completely neglected my family blog and family photos this summer), I have to take a breather or it gets the best of me. I’ve asked my husband to keep me in check. School is starting soon, and then my time to craft/sew/create will be even more limited by the fact that I have to bring home a paycheck for another 9 months. I do worry about balancing all of this, but it will all work out in the end- it always does. I have to focus on life day-by-day, and not get wrapped up in the politics of teaching or who I need to please. Other than planning doctor appointments and social dates, I have no long term goals mapped out on a calendar. Maybe that needs to change, but right now I’m doing good just keeping up. I need to please myself, my kids and my husband, and everything else is small potatoes.
I bought a ring recently- I can’t wait to get it in the mail. It says, “Be true to your dreams.” That is going to be my mantra this year as I set out to start a creative life and finish my teaching life, if only for a while.
I’d love to hear how you stay true to who you are in your day-to-day life. Any tricks? Words of wisdom? Little vignettes to share? Post ’em here- I’d love to do a recap!
p.s. Did you enter for my first giveaway? No? Click here– you have until Friday the 20th! I’ll announce the winner on Saturday!
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Keep Up With the Crazy
About Natalie
Life is crazy. Craft it well. Thanks for stopping by Crafting Crazy! I'm stumbling into a new sort of life after leaving a 12-year teaching career. More of a practical crafter, I'm trying to temper the perfection a bit. If I mess up, I’ll be sure to share- then we can laugh together. Here you'll find anything I like that makes my life better or fun. Crafts, of course, but also posts about food, home decor, exercise... whatever I'm dabbling in at the moment. I'm so glad you're here- thanks for stopping by! Content Brewing!
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You are doing way better than I am. I’m picking and choosing which days to get caught up on first. I’m so many days behind. SO. MANY. So you are in no way a loser.
I like to believe that I am totally true to myself and to my readers. Sure, I, like Design Mom, try and keep a more positive approach to my blog, but I still show times where things don’t work out the way I want them to. Since I have a full-time outside of the home career, I do feel like I have to keep specific work stuff (frustrations) off my blog which is sometimes a challenge when I am trying to be fairly transparent.
I definitely ride the wave – which is why I’m so behind on 31DBBB. I can only do so much in a day and the blog occasionally is the part that suffers.
Well, I think I’ve mentioned before, but for me, blogging helps me think positively about my life. So while my blog self may not be my “true” self in the traditional, warts-and-all sense of the word, it is in some sense the self that I aspire to be. I tend toward downer-Debbie-ism, but I know no one wants to read that. So the fact that I have even a teeny audience, even if it is just my future self looking back on this blur of days while the kids are little, makes me try really hard to find the positive. I don’t always succeed, and I know my exasperation sneaks into some of my posts. It’s not about portraying my life as perfect or myself as a perfect mother, because Lord knows neither is the case. It’s more about helping me to remember how I blessed I am and that nothing is really “that bad.” Because that really is more true for me than the little (and occasionally bigger) frustrations that I could otherwise let define me.
hi nat!
in the past i already told you how i thought you were superwoman just for being a successful working mom with a young child (i think all moms must have super-hero energy of some kind to do what they do!). but you’re now a mom of TWO little ones, you’re still working, and this year when you started showcasing your mad skillz for crafting AND blogging… well i don’t think i have words to adequately describe how amazed i am that you do even HALF of what you do!…
hmm… your question – a very thought-provoking one! i’m not exactly sure how it is that i stay true to myself but i think i learned early on (perhaps not in the best way – i’ll provide a vignette) to just not care too much about pleasing other people or being pressured too much by what others think. at the same time i try to keep an open mind and respect that others might have a different opinion, that everyone is different. that i may not understand why others do things differently and i certainly don’t expect other people to always understand why i choose to do things the way i do. i guess i sort of have my parents to thank for it all…
—–my vignette (skip this if short on time):
starting around the age of 11 or 12 my parents started focusing (to an unhealthy degree) on things like “why didn’t you get 100% on the test?” when i thought they’d be proud of me when i showed them my 95%. they constantly referred to their friends’ ivy-league-college-bound children and how lucky their friends were to have “ideal” children like that. these are just a few examples. i now know that it is not an uncommon way for some immigrant parents to encourage their children to excel. and there are much worse things that parents can do than to over-pressure their kids to do well. but, as a kid, it was pretty annoying to never seem good enough to my parents…
i’ve read how some kids under this sort of pressure to succeed can get depressed, and (in extreme cases) even feel suicidal. i don’t know exactly why but very early on (after multiple failed attempts at trying to explain to my parents how i did not appreciate being compared to other children and how i believed their views of “the ideal child” to be skewed), i told myself that this was bogus and i needed to just do my own thing, believe in myself, and not care too much about my parents approval. i would just quitely nod my head at whatever they suggested and i would carefully judge for myself what the best thing would be to do. i’m not saying this is the best thing to do, or that i didn’t ever make errors in judgment, or that i didn’t potentially miss out on some valuable parental guidance along the way. but i never showed another test score to them, even when i WOULD get 100s. i got very accustomed to not looking to them (or others) for validation. at an early age i set my own standards for myself – realistic ones. and didn’t beat myself up if i didn’t achieve everything…
i achieved my own goal of getting a full-ride scholarship at the nearby state school instead of my parent’s goal of my attending an ivy-league school. i chose to study a subject i loved (something my parents said should only ever be a hobby) instead of what my parent’s wanted me to study. i got a job and moved out as soon as i could after graduating high school and relished being on my own in a school with a huge population where i could revel in being a wallflower rather than being critically scrutinized by my parents (or anyone else)…
when i no longer had to live under my parents’ roof and unrealistic expectations, then my relationship with them improved dramatically. i was finally able to focus on fully appreciating the other, more positive things, that i did learn from my parents (appreciation of literature, music, art/design, nature, good ethnic food, the ability to be fluent in a foreign language, the willingness to volunteer, to work hard and to try and make a positive contribution to society, etc.) rather than focusing on the negative. my parents did miss out on my sharing a lot of things with them because of how i chose to deal with things when i lived with them which was: if they didn’t accept my shortcomings then they weren’t going to get to hear about my successes either. i’m not saying this was the best thing to do but it’s how i coped with keeping my self-esteem intact as a kid…
i know my parents had good intentions and they probably thought they were doing the best thing too. and no matter if i think they are right or wrong, i have to respect that they just had a different way of doing things. and hey, their actions ultimately made me the very happily-independent and confidently true-to-myself person i’ve been since about age 12. so, among other things, i have them to thank for that! by the way, did you ever notice that my favorite stories of yours (whenever we would be traveling together) are the ones where you talk about the fun relationship you had with your parents/grandparents and sisters growing up?
—end vignette….
when i was blogging i was just happy to put down whatever i felt like writing about at the time. i didn’t care who else was reading it or linking to it. i went and re-read some of those blog entries (no longer found online) that i have saved – most of them are mundane and lacking humor (very true-to-me as i am the least humorous person i know!) and yet it is still somewhat interesting (to myself) to review what was going on in my head at the time. i basically blogged for myself and to practice using the technology at the time. and i think back then people who linked to my blog only did so because some of my friends had really interesting blogs. also, at that time, there just weren’t so many blogs out there compared with today!…
i think people who do blog should be free to update their blog whenever they want to. and in any way that they want to. and link to who they want to. or feel free to not link at all. i’m all for extolling the attributes of those blogs a person finds awesome. giving credit where credit is due if one uses another blogger’s ideas. but i also find lurking perfectly acceptable…
if a blogger is looked upon as an authority on some particular subject and has lots of followers, they might feel a responsibility to update more. and that’s great if updating more makes them happy. but if this uber-blogger were to just want a change of scenery, or quit, or play a trick (i remember there was this well-written hoax blog that my friends and the blogosphere enjoyed reading for awhile before we all found out it wasn’t for real – called plain layne), then i think that’s fine too. if one person doesn’t like another person’s blog content/style/design/etc. then they can just discontinue reading it. or they can let that blogger know in one way or another. maybe have an interesting debate with them. maybe start their own blog and use what they didn’t like about other blogs to do things differently. and if it’s a hoax (like plain layne) then they will eventually get called out on it…
well it’s back-to-school time so after this you don’t have to worry about getting long blog comments from me anymore. summer break’s over! if you read the entire comment then thanks and, as usual, won’t hurt my feelings if you delete. just like i never blogged to get followers, i don’t comment only in hopes that i will get comments back (if i do, great. if not, no worries!). if you didn’t read it all, i totally understand (after all, i know you are busy!). but if you think your blog hasn’t made me think about a lot about blogging recently, then you’re wrong!…
your recent enthusiasm for blogging (i finally clicked to read more about that blog challenge, by the way – congrats, looks like you’re almost done!) made me nostalgic for a time in my life when i used to have a lot of fun being more active in the blog world. up until recently i hadn’t thought a lot about blogging for a long time. blogs today certainly are more plentiful and varied than ever. it’s been REALLY interesting to see how the blogosphere has turned out! i wonder what’s next for the ol’ internets and all the blogs out there. in the meantime i hope you continue to keep posting to your blog regularly when you have time, even after that blog challenge thing is over and work is in full swing again. i sure enjoy seeing your crafty projects come to life. and learning that, even if you and the other moms/crafters say it’s not as easy as you make it look, one can indeed juggle all the things that you do and blog about it too!
see ya around! keep being an amazing blogger/person!
xoxo, d.
p.s. – hey where did your eyes go?
hey, me again.
nevermind about the “where did your eyes go?” question. upon browsing your site again i see that it’s back… so probably just my browser going wonky while loading your page!
hmmm… on my other browser your eyes are not back… could be something to do with some google-analytics blocking add-ons or something… in any case it’s definitely my browser!
Hey Nat, I completely agree with Gabrielle that blogs are “shows” at the end of the day and try to keep mine a positive, crafty place that people will want to hang out in. But sometimes my bad days show through and that’s OK. While I may not post every detail of my life, what I do post is the real deal. HM is a hobby for me that comes after my husband, my kids, my family, my “real-life” friends, simply a record of my sewing journey and what I’m learning. When I get to meet nice bloggers who I connect with, it seems like a bonus for me. But if the little blog forever stayed just as little as it is now, I’d be pretty happy with that. My readers like what I post, and I love hearing from them so it works out well. 🙂 And you are doing a great job, by the way!