Hey everyone! I hope your week started off well! Yesterday was our second day of GOTR and it was soooo much better than Friday because we could actually go outside! I also loved how enthusiastic some of the girls were to run! We gave them marker dots on their hands as lap counters, and they had a blast trying to get up to 9 (which was a mile) and get different colors! Some girls made it to almost 2 miles in 20 minutes!
I was reading several of the re-caps over the weekend of Fit Bloggin, a healthy living blogger conference in Baltimore. It sounded like such a fun time! I heard about one session that I found really interesting, so I checked out the Fit Bloggin website to get the full recap. The session was called How Much Blogging Is Too Much?
I have a few friends and family members who don’t think my blog is the best idea, they are afraid I invest way too much time into writing online and not enough time focusing on me and my real life. And I have to agree with them, to an extent. I absolutely love blogging and it’s given me so much – your support, a creative outlet, a ton information, and some great friends I would never have met otherwise.
However, there is a line on how much involvement in blogging is too much, especially since for me it’s a hobby and not a career. I know some other bloggers have written posts about taking a step back and focusing on living in the moment.
Because of all of this, I was intrigued to see what they had to say during the session. The session talked a lot about how much is too much to share on your blog, and one of their points made a lot of sense – we share things on here that we wouldn’t normally share with others in real life:
“In real life, we keep weigh-ins, diet slip-ups, family drama and your cat’s bowel movements to our close inner circle, but blogging has blurred the lines of what is acceptable to share. Let’s chat about reality blogging and how social media makes you feel.” (Source)
First they discussed sharing personal things, like your name! You all know my name is Katie, but from what I know I haven’t put my last name on the blog. However, if you know how to use a computer I’m pretty sure you could find out my last name and a lot of other details about my life if you wanted to. Hopefully no one wants to stalk me… I promise I’m not that interesting.
They also discussed putting other people on your blog. I think one thing that struck me (which I heard a few weeks ago) was that our friends and family didn’t sign up to be on the blog. Personally I stopped using people’s names for the most part and try and ask before putting up pictures but I could do better with it. It’s important to remember that the people in our lives may not want to be on our blog!
Personally, I also think that knowing who reads my blog affects what I write. I definitely hold back more knowing that family reads my blog (hi family!). Which, honestly, I think is a good thing. It makes me think twice before typing and keeps me from turning this into an online journal for the world to see.
Finally, someone in the audience stated that they felt like a disappointment sometimes and Monica answered:
“You define the deal. You’re holding up your end of being who you are. You get to define how you want to lose your weight or run your race. If you’re documenting your own journey, you want to be able to share those things. You don’t have to answer to anyone, you don’t owe anyone anything.”
I loved that reminder. Blogs are not meant to fit into a certain mold or meet certain expectations. I write because I love to, I write about what I want and what I feel like writing about. I live my life how I want to. And if people don’t like it, they shouldn’t read, I don’t have to apologize for anything because I don’t OWE that to anyone. I love and appreciate my readers and it means the world to me when I hear from someone who can relate to what I am going through, but I can’t relate to everyone!
What are your thoughts on some of the points raised in this session?
How much is too much?