Call me “a semi anonymous blogger”. Club-kid approached me when she arrived at the Style and Musings party and asked, “bp, what exactly do you mean by being a semi anonymous blogger?” I explained it by saying, I don’t put my face out there nor do I tell everyone in my personal life that I do this. I tell people I am writing, but I don’t tell them I am a blogger really. I have blog friends, and a blog life, but I still keep it essentially to the people who I know “get it”.
Since I am still determining what I want to do with my blog, I can’t explain it to anybody else. Semi anonymous. If you know who I am offline, great. If you are interested to know more about me and follow @blogger_bp on Instagram or Twitter, welcome! Enjoying and digesting my posts while snuggled up at the end of a long week with your iPad in your jammies as Chocoholic does, is the ultimate in flattery. I want my writing to read like a conversation with a good friend. As Olympia pointed out to me over brunch two weeks ago, it is clear that I prefer not having a face to the words. I started to be more open to an audience hoping that you’d want to read because you like what you see, not read because of who I am or am not.
Because of this semi anonymity which was pretty much at full blown who-the-heck-is-she? status up until that infamous post last January, I have been and still am finding my way as a writer, but more so as a blogger. You see the blogs with the pictures, the styled houses, the featured parties. I did one post like that in the early start of this site, and though it is authentically me and I love entertaining and crafting, it’s not my forte, at least not from that blog world perspective.
Yesterday I did a catch up email with my new friend, Web Girl, who I met at a round table discussion about book publishing at ALT Summit. She wanted to know what I have been up to and that she noticed I am taking to the blog world quite well. She asked me what I think of it so far. She still wonders about how she feels about her place in it, as I always do. Trust me, I think about it every day. What started as my email reply turned into this “post like” essay so I decided to share it here. So this answer still is to Web Girl, but it is for you too.
Hey Web Girl! I think we seem to understand each other. The way I see it (so far) the blog world is like the high school experience, all of the students with the same end game in mind, but all within their own subcultures to get there. No wrong, no right, but in order to know where one fits in is a matter of either finding your group, or just blazing the trail for yourself. In the same way it’s unfair to judge whether or not you should be in your high school because you aren’t specifically in the Honors class, the drama department, or in with the cool kids, one shouldn’t sell herself short if she feels she could thrive creatively in the blog world (however limited her time there is). So that is where I am. I am not sure what kind of blogger I am. I don’t know what group I belong in. There is room for us all. We just need to make room for ourselves and how we want our experience to be. Is that kind of where you are?
My first foray into a blogger community was a brunch I attended. I wanted to meet and connect with other bloggers. I was already writing personal narrative but wanted to know what other people who blogged were like. I wanted to talk shop, I wanted to understand what programs they used, I wanted to know how on earth they take such well lit blog photos of their dining tables, lush house plants, hair styles, etc. Only a handful were talking about the process or art of their blogging. A small number of the very friendly and well dressed guests I met wanted to do more than just small talk. The main agenda over eggs and mimosas were a love for fashion, beauty steals or recent shopping deals. So I went with the flow and had a good morning discussing travel, restaurants, recipes and leisure activities in wine country. I had to sign up for twitter just so I could RSVP to this event, mind you. The social media frenzy was overwhelming that morning, at least to my eyes. To tweet or IG in real time blew my mind. I have only started doing it in real time recently, and even then I need to hide it from hubby who often wants to throw my iPhone in the garbage if I am figuring out what hashtags to use for my #morningmuffin. These are the tastemakers.
My original and primary blog community today is a mommy/ ladies group of stellar creatives. Though I am not a mommy, this is the last thing on anyone’s mind when we ‘work together’. There is a connection to their voices, their work, their lives, and most significantly their genuine and giving spirits that I can’t explain. I became acquainted with them simply through blogging, reading, commenting, and taking an online class. I feel a real kinship with them and I feel like they have my back and encourage me every single day. These ladies have work to do daily. They have brands leaning on them, projects to launch, and territory to conquer. They have meals to cook and mouths to feed. These are my mentors.
I follow a number of fabulously vibrant women on the internet. The found furniture, the styled food, the streamers, the balloons, the hosted parties, the paint, the cute kids, the handsome husbands, the art projects, the how-to videos, the cinematographic shots of their weekend picnics, the vintage cars, their casual edginess… These are my idols.
I then joined a blog hop, though I can’t say how I found it. With a theme like “be happy” how could I resist? The participants were positive, hopeful, sweet and well…. HAPPY! A mix of DiY single gals, newly married photographers, and entertaining mamas-to-be, each week I felt right at home reading shared posts and exchanging stories about the happiness theme often centered around gratefulness, cheerfulness, being positive, and staying hopeful. It has since transformed into mailing activities, themes around love, collaborative craft projects, general blog hopping and mutual admiration. These are my sorority sisters.
At ALT, an entire industry was opened up to me, one that I really couldn’t determine that I had a place in. Meeting you, Web Girl, and the variety of talented small businesspeople and creatives, whether writers, video stars, Pinterest sensations, etc, I learned that universal lesson: there are no rules, only ours. These are my people. You are my people, Web Girl, whether we understand it or not.
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| Yes, this conversation really did happen right in front of me. Quite the laugh. |
So I remain to be the semi anonymous blogger. You know who I am, but many still don’t, and it’s okay, I’d do this all anyway, even if nobody reads this. So whether I collaborate on an event, write about my eating binges, gush about my friendships, share my heartache about making hard choices, touch on the comedy and reality of how even good marriages are hard, divulge my emotional or self care routines, and contemplate my process as a writer and blogger, I suppose the biggest thing to keep in mind is we may never fit into one mold, and maybe that is what the beauty of blogging is today. Our people find us, as we inevitably found each other. There is no mold, the blogging world will mold to you. Nothing is better than a custom fit anyway.
So that’s me,
@blogger_bp
Even If Nobody Reads This 
So glad to know you. You are a total gift. Xo
That is SO right back at ya!
Loved this. You have such a talent – and thank you for sharing it with the rest of us. xoxo
I so love the concept of “Even if nobody reads this…” There's no posturing, it's just real. You're doing it for you, because you want to, because you have to, and that makes all the difference.
Lisa, I really appreciate that you see what I am after! 😉
Thanks Asia! It's been a fun ride so far and I am glad to have you to share it with!
nicely written, great post!
Thanks Rachel! This is pretty much what you and I used to touch on now and then.
Whoa! How do you guys know each other? Rachel & I emailed a bit after a conference we were both at, but didn't get to meet in person!
Cool