Blogging - I've been doing it wrong. I didn't make a big announcement or anything - which is unusual for me, I know - but I've stopped writing product reviews and hosting giveaways here, and it wasn't even a big deal, I just...stopped. I wanted Table for Five to go back to what it was when it started, a personal blog. There's just been one problem. I forgot HOW to write a personal blog. I know that sounds crazy, but it's true. Personal blogging in my mind became this HUGE thing, like if I didn't have profound things to say, there was no point in writing at all. I had built it up in my head that every post had to be a long discourse on deep subjects. And then this morning, while Kaitlyn was getting ready for school, it hit me. I was remembering this blog the way it was in 2005 when it started, but was I remembering it correctly? After the bus came, I opened up my dashboard to All Posts and filtered it to September 2005, and opened up Notepad. Was my first month of … [Read more...]
Blogging. I Still Feel Like I’m Doing It Wrong.
I have published 1,696 posts since September 2005. I've written personal posts, sponsored posts, meme posts, question and answer posts, and one post where I was a little drunk. I've blogged about myself, my husband, my kids, my parents, my in-laws, celebrities, politicians, and other bloggers. Because of this blog, I've had opportunities I could not have dreamed of before I started. But here's the thing. Almost every day, I feel like I'm not blogging the right way. Or rather, that my blog has gotten away from me and I don't know how to get it back. Every day that I spend online, I find other blogs that look to be way better than this one. I am constantly questioning whether I'm using the right theme, whether my banner needs updating, and that's just what's on the surface. I feel hopelessly inadequate about my writing all the time. When I read an outstanding blog post on another blog, I feel like everyone else is just straight up more talented, more funny, more … [Read more...]
Coming Around Again
I know nothing stays the same, But if you're willing to play the game, It's coming around again. Even though that Carly Simon song is about marriage, I keep hearing that lyric in my head. Now that I switched to this Genesis framework/Lifestyle child theme and have my categories up at the top, I've been going through the categories looking for ones I can combine so there aren't three rows of them. Which means I've been reading a lot of old posts. You know what? In 2006, 2007, this blog was really good. I wrote exactly the way I spoke, let words just pour out of me onto the screen. I wrote posts where I talked about what I did all day, what I watched on TV that night, places I went, things I saw. I told my readers how awesome they were, how much I appreciated them, how important they were to me. I wrote posts where I linked to new readers, it blows my mind how some of today's most well-known bloggers were once my commenters. But I know exactly why those bloggers stopped reading … [Read more...]
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