If you are into memes and tag-you’re-its, you have most probably seen the ‘Letter to My Younger Self’ one and have also most probably done a post about it. Which is totally cool. If only someone had tagged me. Sigh. Oh wait, I think someone did tag me but I never really got around to doing it. If you were the one who tagged, I offer you my sincerest apologies. I blame scatterbrain syndrome. It is a known medical condition. I dare you to check wikipedia.
What was I saying again?
See, I told you…
S-c-a-t-t-e-r-b-r-a-i-n.
Anyway.
That was a really cool meme. I want to finally do one now but I thought I’d jazz it up a bit. Instead of addressing it to my younger naive self. I thought I’d address it to my newbie blogger self. Cuz you know, I am like a blogging guru now. What? I am. For serious, I am. A great bullshit artist once told me, that in blogland you can be anything you want to be. You could even call yourself SnowTinkerRella if you wanted to. I am totally going to register SnowTinkerRella as a domain, so back off domain name thieves! Of course, she was most probably bullshitting me as well. But, that’s beside the point. The point is. Everybody has their own stories to tell. From Joe at The Offaler from The Land Down Under to Victoria at Tales of The Snooty Writer Queen.
Do you get it now my sweet? No?
Let’s just move on with my letter writing then. This would shed some light. I hope.
Dear newbie blogger Brenda,
You are going to open a Twitter account in April 2009. And you are going to be like a mama on crack. You would be totally and insanely addicted to it that sometimes you would forget to shower, brush your teeth or feed your kids. That last one only happened once. Okay? You guys had a really heavy brunch so no need to give me THAT look. You would tweet with some really cool and smart folks. Most are bored-out-of-their-brains lovely stay-at-home-mamas like yourself. You would laugh and cry and laugh some more at their tweets. Be open and keep an open mind. Twitter is like a giant dinner party where everyone is trying to out-converse everyone else. Some tweeps you would get on marvelously and would have no trouble tweeting with for hours on end. Whilst some…well some are just natural twerps. They would illicit some very strong emotions out of you. Feelings so strong that sometimes you would feel like stabbing them on their eyeballs with a fork, a very rusty fork at that. But it is best to just exercise your Power of Unfollow and in some instances Power of The Block. Don’t worry about it. Most tweeters have very short attention span. So, it ain’t a big deal. Trust me on this one.
You would soon discover that most people on Twitter are bloggers and you would start your very own blogspot blog the following month. You would start with blogspot.com because just about everybody is on there. You would not know till much later that wordpress.com is heaps awesomer. It’s okay. No biggie. You can always migrate later on. Maybe. You are still umming and arring about this one. Your first few posts would be about Twitter. Obviously. And your first commenter would be this brilliantly brilliant writer named Veronica. Stick with her. She’s a cool cat. You would adore her and her words. And she would become a major part of your blogging life.
You would also write a post about the Ultime. It’s a vibrator by the way. Not your run-of-the-mill vibrator though. It’s like the Big Daddy of Vibrators. It actually won the 2009 Vibrator of the Year Award! I am not joking. This post would bring you lots of google hits. As a matter of fact, vibrator would be your #1 search term. Of all time. Yes really. You would actually email the Ultime People for a possible sponsorship on your blog. Seeing that the perverts googlers all seem to find their famous vibe via your blog. But, they would never ever get back to you. Bastardettes! Forgive them anyway.
Sometime in June 2009, you would get your very first *hate* tweet. Someone would @reply you with these words… @mummytime…you horrible person!…cat murderer! Try not to take it too personally. He or she was probably a kitty cat in his/her previous life. So, try and keep your cool. Okay? And for the record, you are not a cat murderer. It was an accident. That kitty died whilst crossing the road. Yes, kitty was shadowing you but there was no way in the world you could have known that a stoopid jerk with a slight formula-one tendencies would run over her. Poor poor kitty. May she rest in eternal peace.
In July, you would experience what it feels to have double-digit comments. 10 big ones in fact. Hurrah! You are gonna feel like King of the World slash James Cameron when his titanically Titanic film won Best Picture. You are gonna feel fanfreakingtastic about it and you are gonna grin like good ole Jack Nicholson for like 5 days. Yes, you will. It was a post about motherhood and how it can sometimes make you feel like riding the mofo of a rollercoaster. It was where you admitted to being a mean mum to your kids. And how you can sometimes say the meanest things to them. And that it breaks your mama heart to a million little pieces when you see the sad sad look on their tiny innocent faces. Forgive yourself. Stay-at-home-mummying is tough yo.
In September, you are gonna swear and say Fuck for the first time *ever* on your generally wholesome blog. Why? Because some thugs would physically assault your Mr Teenager and would punch him on the face whilst inside the train. You would howl like a madwoman and would wanna rip the bastards’ head off. It’s okay, don’t feel guilty about it. You are his mama and you have every right to feel that way. You would report the matter to the police and they would catch the little fuckers. Your Mr Teenager would get over it. I promise you, he would get over it. Just remember Nietzsche’s wise words ‘what doesn’t kill makes us badass.’ Or something like that.
In December, you are totally going to flip out. As in mad flapping flipping out. Your little starlet blog would be chosen as a ‘Blog of Note’ by Blogger. That is like OMG! The best and most awesome thing that could happen to any blogspot blog. It’s like being canonized by Papa Razzi. Well not really. But close enough. Your blog is gonna visited by 12,000 absolute unique visitors and would have over 30,000 pageviews. Your blog followers would multiply like freaking rabbits on viagra and cialis. You have hit the blogging jackpot, baby girl. So be uber-grateful, Okay?
In February of 2010, you would start a kickarse meme called FlogYoBlogFriday or FYBF for the acronymists out there. This meme would give you the chance to connect and become bloggy friends with some of the most awesome bloggers out there. It would prove to be heaps of fun for everyone. It would be like having a frat party every single Friday without the drugs and the booze. You would run it for 20 consecutive weeks and you would have an absolute blast hosting it. But, you would later decide to give it up and pass the gig to your bloggy friend, Lori. But why give it up if it was making you happy, I hear you ask? Because it was simply time to let it go. You had FYBF fatigue. And it’s okay to admit that.
I think I should end this letter now. Because I don’t think I can pull off the newbie blogging card anymore. Cuz hello, it’s only like July now.
Here’s one thing though. You are gonna make lots of good bloggy friends. They will stand by you. They will support you. They will cheer you up and send you virtual hugs when you’re down. They will make you laugh till the snots come out. They will make you cry so hard till there’s no more tears to be shed. You will remain fiercely loyal to them. Because that is how you roll. You will lose some bloggy friends. But that’s okay because they probably never were your bloggy friends to begin with. So get over it.
Above all else, try to remain true to yourself. Blog followers will come and go. RSS and email subscribers will come and go. And commenters will come and go. That is okay sweetheart. Don’t take it to heart. Remember, you are blogging because you love it and it gives you joy. Always remember that. You are blogging for yourself. As soon as you let the traffic, the visitors, the comment counts, the subscribers, the sponsors and the adverts dictate how you feel towards blogging. Slap yourself in the face. Or maybe not, cuz that’s a bit stupid and your kids might think that their mama is going a teeny bit mental. Just try to pull yourself together and rein your feelings in. Go back to your very first post. Read it and read it again. You had 0 followers back then. You had 0 commenters back then. You had 0 sponsors back then. And you had 0 adverts back then. But guess what? It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter a single bit.
Blog like no one is reading my dear sweet Brenda.
With all my love,
The Future-ish MummyTime
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
2011, Mummy-Time. All rights reserved.
Let’s Get Social!