It’s a funny thing, but I can explain til I am blue in the face to my friends what’s making me sad; ‘it’s the blog’, and they stare at me with blank faces. They have just no idea. And yet, only a look between bloggers conveys a million words…they just get it. It is a very hard thing to explain to non-bloggers.
When you are on-line all the time, you develop a sixth sense, meaning, I suppose, that you can pick up nuances and mood-shifts in the on-line community that others who don’t live it can’t. Trying to spell it out in the cold light of day is almost impossible and particularly to non-bloggers.
There are plenty of people who work on-line and I guess they have that sense to a certain degree too, but unless they have a blog as well to throw into the mix, I’m not sure it is quite the same. And this is really relevant and obvious when it comes to those who work in ‘social media’ but don’t actually have a blog themselves.
The art of blogging is sharing enough of yourself to be truly genuine, but not so much that you give everything away. And when you share yourself, you leave yourself wide open to any kind of criticism (and indeed, praise, sometimes), judgement and speculation. We all know that we can be given 100 compliments and one insult, and the thing we remember? The insult. Well, that’s blogging and it’s like that every single day.
Throw Twitter into the mix, and you can see that on a volatile day, or when something goes wrong (or right) it’s all too easy to leap into your timeline and flip out a Tweet (I have done it today, in fact, after vowing not to!) in temper or anger. Then, of course, everyone else piles in and before you know it, virtual feathers are flying everywhere. It’s no help that everyone knows who has been where, with whom and when, and usually what canapés were served, what was in the goodie bag and what shoes were worn. It takes very thick skin indeed not to mind that you weren’t there Tweeting all about it yourself. If there is anything guaranteed to add to self-doubt, you have it right there.
Yes, we’re completely changing the way that women view, consider and buy beauty – we really, truly are. That is the beauty bloggers’ indelible stamp on the on-line world, and it cannot be changed back. And for all the wonderful things about blogging (and there are many), there is still that one thing… the continual bareness…that doesn’t always put you in a good place. When it happens, like it has today, I know that it’s going to take a chat with another blogger to make it right again. They’re going to instantly get it that a slight stats fall makes you want to throw in the towel, that an off-handed Tweet makes you want to obliterate your laptop and that a meeting cancellation (or three; thanks for that) makes you feel about an inch high.
It’s no surprise really that being labelled over-sensitive might apply to a lot of us bloggers; but it generally is only ever said by those who don’t live in the blog world. Other bloggers get it. Because as I said at the top, it does take one to know one.
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