Thursday 8 January 2015

Wondering: In which I tell you how I'm rebuilding my blog

What do I want this blog to be? What do I want to build?
Manchester Art Gallery childrens building activities
I think this is what hampered my blogging in 2014. Not knowing the answer to that question. Seeing so many other blogs out there that inspired me and finding, as often happens, that the influence of others clouds the truths of yourself. I am so drawn to bloggers whose clothes and style I love, but I've never felt comfortable showing myself online. I love DIYs and tutorials but did I really want to commit to all the hard work and time involved in doing that myself? I love to write above all else but the blogs I am drawn to and hooked by are those with the beautiful pictures using fabulous cameras that I cannot achieve. Do I want to strive to become a well-known, monetised blogger in such a saturated market? Do I even want to view my blog in market terms? I'm not sure I even know the answers to these questions now.

And then I realised that my answers are in what I thought my blog would be the day I started writing it. There were six words I attached to it: making, baking, wandering, wondering, sewing, mothering. Those are the things I wanted to share and document. Combined, they are who I am, they are the touches of domesticity that feel like home to me. And so they are what this blog is and will be again. 

I am part of a community of women in the UK and further afield that feel it is not a contradiction to value intelligence and yet want to focus their lives on their homes and family. To be ambitious and yet content. To be interested in serious and important things yet also love simple and beautiful things. You can be interested in both fashion and world affairs. You can be ordered and yet free. You can be all the things our foremothers fought for in the feminist movements of the past century while being happy, fulfilled and worthwhile wearing a pinny, baking a cake, kids round your feet, crayons all over the table, haphazard twigs from your walk in a vase on your table, and muddy footprints by the back door. And so that is what you're going to get from me.

(And, slightly unrelated, but on the subject of building something, my middle boy built that fabulous tower in the even more fabulous Clore Art Studio at Manchester Art Gallery. If you're in the area, you really should go.)

5 comments:

  1. That sounds EXACTLY like the blog I want to read. To hell with monetizing, let's just blather and take pretty photos. Be serious one day and frivolous the next. For that's what life is truly about. I'm looking forward to reading.

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  2. Found you through Kats blog. Im the same. I don't want to be photographed and seen either. I love looking at others Bloggy photos and their lives though and think they are brilliant and good for them for making money from it but I just want to have fun with mine and blog as and when I can. Will enjoy having a look through yours in a bit with a cuppa.

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    1. Hi Sam. Thank you! I'll take a look at yours too. x

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  3. This definitely strikes a chord with me! I'm looking forward to reading more of your posts :-) I'm just starting out with my blog, so don't really know which direction I want to take it, but at the moment enjoying doing it is the main thing!

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