Top Ten Mistakes Bloggers Make--Yep, that'd be me

Yesterday, I was reading an article about the top ten mistakes bloggers make that sinks them into bloggy unpopularity. As I read through them, I realized that, yes, my blog falls under the category of an unsuccessful blog. I don't post with regular frequency, I don't narrow my topics to appeal to a specific readership, I'm still on Blogger instead of having my own domain. In fact, I think I'm probably guilty of all ten of the mistakes bloggers make.

I'd like to say something noble, like "I don't care, because I'm happy with things just the way they are."

But that would defeat the point of this blog.

Because the reason I started this blog wasn't to garner readership. I never imagined anyone on the face of the earth would read this blog. Well, okay, I imagined it, in a Walter Mitty sort of way. I imagined that someone would come along and "discover" me and I would land a column in the New York Times which would catapult me into literary immortality and make my family rich and proud.

That's called "fantasy," folks, and I'm here to tell you that it hasn't happened. Yet.

But I have been discovered. By friends. Friends I hadn't even known I'd had. Good people who live good lives and do good things, who keep their own blogs full of top ten mistakes. And their mistakes inspire me. Their lives inspire me.

And, true, I do wish sometimes that I could have more readers. That's the honest part. Sometimes, when I read other blogs who have massive readership, I feel jealous. Especially when the blog isn't all that great, or focuses on being nasty and sarcastic. But when I come back to the reasons for keeping this blog, I know that wide readership was never a goal.

I have five kids. I was an only child. Even having an only child, my mom didn't seem to be able to write stuff about my life that I could look back on, didn't keep a journal of any kind, though she did consider herself somewhat of a writer. I have very few photos and hardly any memorabilia from my childhood. I wish I did. I wish I could read about my mom's struggles with my dad, and her frustrations with me. And I would hope that, occasionally, she was proud of me for something. I'd like to read about her dreams and ambitions, her fears and failures. I'd like to have that as part of a very important history for me and my own children. But now that my mom has passed away, all of that stuff is gone with her.

With five kids, I have five times more difficulty providing those things than my mother did. I've always tried to keep some kind of diary for my children and I've tried keeping tons of pictures, but I haven't always been consistent with either one. With a public blog, I have something that can drive me more than my own need for nostalgia and sentimentality.

Pride and arrogance. The need for approval and kudos. Feedback.

Like I said, I'd like to say something noble. But that would be disingenuous. And that, remember, would defeat the point of this blog.

Because, while I write about my life and my children, I also want to touch people with honesty, truth and transparency. I could possibly increase my readership if I threw in more snark and sarcasm. I might get more hits if I tried to be exclusively funny. People might not run away screaming in boredom if I focused only on my thrifting and my crafts or any one area of my life. The whole blog would be entirely more interesting and professional if I'd pay for a domain name and have someone design me a few snazzy seasonal templates. Or if I'd just update the photos (The Baby, for instance, is now almost FOUR and no longer looks like a baby--see sidebar), for goodness sake.

I could be a super-spiritual person, too, only blogging Scripture or giving (sometimes contrived) life lessons.

But when I sit here at my computer cabinet, dusty and cluttered and open, I intentionally think of the reader who needs to hear from someone who's life is dusty and cluttered and open, who's feeling like everyone makes more money than she does, or everyone's kids are more well-behaved and accomplished than hers, or that he's the only one who struggles with selfishness, that his relationship has problems that no one would understand. That's the reader I want. That's the reader I hope to reach, so that I can say, "Hey. I'm here with you. Let's be dusty and cluttered and open together. But let's be fair about it. Let's look for the dustcloth, and scatter the motes, and sort out the clutter."

"It won't always be perfect. It won't always be spiritual. It won't always be funny. But it will always be real."