<\/p>\n<\/span><\/p>\n\n- Hello, and on behalf of my friends up here with me \u00e2\u20ac\u201c welcome! My name is Dani, and I write a blog called Postcards from the Mothership. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been blogging for almost two years, which almost qualifies me as old skool. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m also the mom of two boys, ages two and a half and four and a half.<\/li>\n
- Before we get started, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to ask how many of you have ever heard of a blog before today?And how many of you have read a blog?And how many of you have blogs of your own, or have ever kept a blog?<\/li>\n
- So the first thing I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to do is beg your indulgence while I take a minute to give you all a little \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Blog 101\u00e2\u20ac\u009d lesson. What is a blog? I recently found this definition on the Web site \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Wired\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and found it sums it up nicely. (slide with this quote on it) “Blog” itself is short for “weblog,” which is short for “we blog because we weren’t very popular in high school and we’re trying to gain respect and admiration without actually having to be around people<\/strong><\/em>.”<\/li>\n
- You laugh, but I find it almost embarrassingly true. Ahem, at least in my case.<\/li>\n
- A blog is, for our purposes here at least, is a little bit like an online journal, or a diary. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s on the Internet, so it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s usually public. Individual blog entries are called posts, and the most recent one usually appears first, so when you read down a page you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re reading backwards in time.<\/li>\n
- Most blogs have a few features in common. First of all, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s usually a comment feature. Most bloggers love to get comments, and the feedback you get on something you write can be very validating. Most blogs also feature a blogroll, which is a list of blogs that particular blogger likes or respects or visits often. And for the truly obsessive, you can install a hit counter that lets you know how many people are visiting your blog, and where they are coming from.<\/li>\n
- People who aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t familiar with the idea of blogging always ask me what I write about, and my answer is always along the lines of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153everything.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I write to tell the stories of my two young sons, of being pregnant with a third, and my thoughts and opinions on being a working Canadian mom in the early part of the 21st century.<\/li>\n
- Blogging to me is often like reading the best bits of the Saturday paper out loud at the breakfast table. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s my way of saying, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hey, did you see this? Did you hear about that? Isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it wonderful \/ outrageous \/ hilarious? What do you think?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/li>\n
- When I blog, I put my thoughts and experiences up on the Internet, and other people who are inclined to read them can do so \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and then they can add their own thoughts via the comment box. Or maybe they get inspired, and write about a similar topic on their own blog. And so the community begets a conversation, and that conversation is public and just about anyone can join in.<\/li>\n
- So what does blogging have to do with mothering?<\/li>\n
- Let me tell you about why I think blogging is such a perfect medium for mothers.<\/li>\n
- A friend of mine who is an amazing scrap-booker once said she sees herself as the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcfamily historian\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, and I immediately loved this idea. In blogging, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m able to chronicle the minutia that is the fabric of our lives at this point in time. It’s a huge part of blogging for me, sharing in words and pictures and even video clips the little moments that might otherwise be lost… and I don’t have to spend a fortune on fancy paper and funky scissors to do it! Marla will talk a little bit more about blogging as art, and the telling of stories.<\/li>\n
- That’s on a very personal level. But blogging can be a very public act. Blogging, and especially mommy blogging, is about community, and about conversation. And those are two things that mothers, especially mothers of very young children, are often desperate for.<\/li>\n
- We don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t live in a society where mom or an older sister grandma or Auntie Agnes is right there in the house, on site to offer advice and guidance in the scary business of raising a child. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re largely on our own, often quietly terrified and sure we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re the only ones who feel lost, afraid and alone. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re desperate for some sort of support system, some kind of external validation, and someone to say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153oh yes, that happened to me, too. Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what I did. And we survived.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/li>\n
- As I said, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a working mom to two small boys. Often, the only time I see parents of kids my age is at the park after dinner. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m on a \u00e2\u20ac\u02dchey, howareya\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 nodding acquaintance with a lot of them, but I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t say I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ever swapped potty training tips with any of them, let alone admit to having a particularly hard time of it. Even when my nipples were cracked and bleeding and I thought I was going to die from the stress of breastfeeding my newborn, I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t actually tell anyone that face-to-face. Someone would ask me how I was doing, and I would grit my teeth and say \u00e2\u20ac\u0153fine\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and suffer in silence.<\/li>\n
- There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something about the Internet that makes it easy to bare your soul. When your friend asks, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153how are you?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re having a terrible day, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s very difficult to unload your heavy heart on someone you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re meeting at the coffee shop, or over playgroup. Part of it is stoicism, and part of it is simply that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not socially acceptable to say you feel like death from the sleep deprivation and you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re afraid you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to hurt your baby if she doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sleep more than two hours in a row. Mothering doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t lend itself to the long, far-reaching and soul-searching conversations I remember from the pubs in my less encumbered years.<\/li>\n
- I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m fundamentally shy. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not so great at making new friends. But the Internet facilitates that relationship-building by taking a lot of the pressure off. The online interface gives you courage, so you are braver about exposing yourself and your foibles and your deepest secrets than you might be sitting on a bench at the park. The face that you present through your blog is maybe a little bit more brave than the you at the park. You have a moment to organize your thoughts, so you can almost sound like a rational person, and on a really good day, even string a few deep thoughts together in a row.<\/li>\n
- As a blogger, you can choose to be completely anonymous and use pseudonyms for yourself and your kids, or you can do like my friend Ann here and use your name in the domain title, or you can choose some combination that you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re comfortable with.<\/li>\n
- Blogging is about connecting with other people, but in a way I never could while pushing our kids on the swings side-by-side at the park.<\/li>\n
- It lets you forge connections with like-minded souls whom you might not otherwise meet in other circumstances, given cultural or geographic or even temporal distances. Blogging crosses boundaries, both social and geographic.<\/li>\n
- So a blog is a kind of an online diary, crossed with a forum, which becomes a community. As a matter of fact, blogging is a natural evolution from the communities created by and for mothers on bulletin boards like babycentre and iVillage. For years now, web-savvy moms have been congregating online in these virtual communities to share information and advice when traditional media like the glossy parenting magazines have either failed them or alienated them or simply failed to address the reality of their lives.<\/li>\n
- Myself, I was a long-time junkie on a board called IVF Connections, because my first son was conceived through in vitro fertilization, and through that bulletin board I met a bunch of moms virtually who became in-real-life friends \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and many of them have blogs of their own now, too.<\/li>\n
- So blogging is like a continuation of that virtual community, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s centred around a particular person, and as the blogger you can control the conversation and how the story is told. It lends itself to a much more in-depth examination of issues and experiences, with an archive of all the conversations that have gone on before.<\/li>\n
- Now, anybody who has ever tried to have a conversation with a preschooler in the room knows you never really get more than three words strung together in a row, let alone have a meaningful conversation.<\/li>\n
- Having kids in your life makes time an incredibly valuable commodity, and when you finally manage to string together fifteen minutes for yourself, it might just be at the crack of dawn when you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re up anyway, even though nobody else in the house is awake. You can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t call your best friend at that time \u00e2\u20ac\u201c at least, I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t! \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but you can boot up the laptop and surf around the blogosphere for a while.<\/li>\n
- Blogging is a perfect medium for the multi-tasking mother with a short attention span. You can write up a post in 15 minutes, maybe even at three in the morning while the baby is nursing and you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re typing with one hand, or you can read a few blogs and leave a comment or two. But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s on your time, and your terms.<\/li>\n
- That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one of the first things I loved \u00e2\u20ac\u201c one of the things I continue to love \u00e2\u20ac\u201c about blogging: that it could be \u00e2\u20ac\u0153all about me.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Keeping it has been an indulgence, something I make time for without apology. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s my \u00e2\u20ac\u0153me time\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, and I value for that. A chance to connect with others, but also to exercise my mental muscles. A chance to keep up my writing chops, but also to have a discourse at a higher level than, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153And how exactly did the spaghetti get inside your brother\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pillow case?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/li>\n
- There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a lot of cynicism in the blogosphere about \u00e2\u20ac\u0153mommy blogs\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. Personally, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get that. Blogs give women like me, women who are maybe shy or maybe geographically isolated or maybe stuck in the house or in an office, a lifeline that they might not otherwise have.<\/li>\n
- You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll hear a little bit more now from my friends here on some issues that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re facing in the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153momosphere\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. But if you only remember one thing about what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve said here today, remember that blogging can be a great source of comfort, and of information, for mothers.
Bloggers, blogging mothers, are having conversations, forging connections, and building communities.<\/li>\n - When we blog, and by that I mean the writing and the reading and the commenting on blogs \u00e2\u20ac\u201c when we blog, we are not alone.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Edited to ever so briefly add: it was amazing<\/strong>. I do not have enough superlatives to tell you how perfect the last two days have been. Expect much gushing and boasting and heaping of affection on my co-panelists, the cool bloggers I finally met in person, the outstanding hospitality, the adorable toddlers, the surprise guests, the shopping…. AMAZING!!!!!!!<\/em><\/p>\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m tucking this into Blogger’s capable hands the day before the Motherlode conference in Toronto. This is the presentation as I originally wrote it, but then I cut it down to just the key words and key points in my own speaking notes, so who knows how it will actually turn out. When I’m back … Continue reading “Welcome to my sandbox: My Motherlode presentation”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meta-blogging","category-my-15-minutes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}