[Project FeeTrail November 2013]: The reluctant blogger

Before you laugh let me explain.

I went to a Jenni Epperson book-signing event last year when this lady blogger approached me.

"Hi, I see that you're a blogger as well. Like naman my blog..." She said. 

I stared at her, still with a meeting-Jenni-Epperson-in-the-flesh high, and crammed for words for a reply:" Okay. How do I do it?"

I didn't know that bloggers now have a Like Page of their own under the category of a Personal blog. I thought Facebook pages are for businesses and public figures. 

"Do you have a card?" She asked. 

"I'm sorry I don't have one." 

"We have a bloggers group, you're welcome to join us". Then she handed me a card of a known blogging community. Unfortunately, I misplaced the card while I was walking towards the parking lot.

Few weeks ago, I attended a blogging convention.  The speakers who spoke about the blogging industry have been blogging just the same time I also started blogging in 2003 til 2009. I did mine when Friendster introduced it, then I went on and explored Multiply. I had so much fun at Multiply. I wrote candidly, like it was a diary of some sort. I must admit that I enjoy nice feedback from people such as:

"Your break up post is engaging" said my Singapore-based male friend.

And one time from my former male boss:

"What do you really write about? I came home this morning to find (wife's name) laughing and she said she was reading your blog."

Or a text message:

"Nak, I'm so bored here at work and I went to your old site just to amuse myself again with your stories."

I also got messages from strangers: 

 "Hi I'm (new friend online friend here). Your friend (old friend) who's now based  here in UK told me about your blogs. Can you please accept my invite and include me in your network? "

I blogged candidly a lot until I was 24 years old. While all these are, honestly, flattering, something in me happened in 2009 that I decided to park my virtual pen and stop blogging. The problem that I have is I came to a point where I realized how dangerous for me, emotionally, to write. Especially now, a lot of people are hooked on the net. I enjoyed my blogging because I did not actually think that people would read it, so I wrote personal stories that came to a point that some of my friends had to remind me: "Don't quote me on your blog, ha!"

I came to a point where I experienced talking to a relatively new acquaintance during a conversation, she quoted me in my blog: "Like what you said in your blog...blah, blah, blah...". I realized before I completely opened up my self to a virtual disaster, I must pull out everything, all emotional, feisty, early-twenties-emotional-writing that I have, while I still have time. Because for some reason I had a vision that the internet can bring back the shit that I wrote when I was in my adult formative years. Thank goodness Multiply shut down.

Plus, I had a love and hate relationship with the internet. Especially when I hit quarter-life crisis. Facebook has gotten so evil that in 2010, I really feel bad logging in. Only I can't stop because that darn thing is addicting. So what did I do? I used Facebook and social media in my Master's thesis and befriended the enemy. Funny, because now I use social media for a living but the key to having a good relationship with social media is go on a social media diet everyday after 8pm and all day on weekends.

I came back again late 2010 with this blog for the reason that I want to get my writing groove back on for Graduate School purposes. This blog is officially three years old next month with more than 500 posts and yet I tell you that I am a reluctant blogger.

I am a reluctant blogger because there are things that I am not ready about. I would like to write about certain things but I do not want to share personal opinions and personal experiences too much, even if I know it will be a hit among readers. I keep looking for a blog that is as brutally honest and candid as I was when I started blogging in 2003 and yet I do not want to be like that anymore. As much as I like to blog publicly, there's this dialectics in me that makes me want to stay private. And I do want to blog because I really love to write and aspire to write a best-selling chick literature novel someday (you heard that, Universe?).

When I started blogging again, I no longer wanted to write about my personal relationships. I just want to write and share random experiences, so I started with getting to know my graduate school university and started reviewing food, restaurants, student hang outs because in this small community, there really isn't much to do (which I honestly think, is a blessing) which prompted my curiosity to find more things to write about. Then the blogging industry boomed.

Then a year later from the book-signing event, I find my self sitting at the fourth row of the blogging convention. A guy seated next to me asked: "Are you a blogger?"

I shyly, if not reluctantly, said: "yes".


I enjoyed during that blogging convention because it is not embarrassing to whip your camera out to take photos of the food, of the signage, of someone's shoes, of the freebies and all the other items that cater to our fancy. It is not awkward to take out my little notebook to take down notes.  You see, I also came to a point where I get slightly embarrassed being referred to as a blogger. Because these days you have to be a somewhat kind of a blogger, and most bloggers now are either fashion bloggers, beauty bloggers, travel and food bloggers. Even mommy bloggers now have a category of their own. I am a little bit of everything, except the mommy part. I do not have breastfeeding stories to tell.

So what about me? It's like I do not belong to any bloggers' community? 

"Why the hell do you want to belong [to a category] anyway?" said my friend Faye. In between smoking, she was saying that these labels will only put me in a box, should I desire to be categorized as a what-blogger.

I realized that she's right.

Someone shared to me recently: "Do you know, I so wanted to write about something but I couldn't, because it is not the image (category) of my blog. It is not what my readers' expect."

I guess I have to be thankful that I am not enclosed in a what-blogger title, that I am free to write about anything because I do not adhere to a certain blog image. And also because it is my blog and my space and I can really write whatever  it is that I want.

So since it seems that I don't have my blogging category figured out, I might as well continue blogging as long as I fancy.