It feels like the day is half over but I’ve only been up for one hour. It’s the first morning of daylight savings and the clocks have moved forward one hour. Going back to work on Tuesday will be a struggle because of that and because I had last week off work. Although my internal clock is set to wake me up around 6 to 6.30am anyway and it doesn’t get the ‘she’s on holidays’ memo unfortunately.
I’ve just updated the backend files of this blog. It took less than five minutes. I remember when I first started using WordPress, you had to manually copy files up using FTP and replace old ones and it was a pain. It’s so much easier now that it all happens fairly pain-free. The only gotcha is when a plugin doesn’t play nicely with the theme or a WordPress upgrade.
I keep this blog going for some reason. It’s been going for ten and a half years now. I don’t think I even acknowledged my ten year anniversary because I so rarely write here these days. Back then this was more of a parenting blog. Back then the blogging community in Australia was quite different. Back then blogger’s press kits weren’t even heard of, and working with brands wasn’t even a twinkle in anyone’s eyes yet. I used to love the sense of community that was around – when people used to comment on blogs. Facebook and Twitter weren’t around to compete with blog comments either so you could contain a conversation in one place. Now I see blog post links go up on Twitter and Facebook and comments made on those platforms and the poor old blog can be neglected unless you’re a popular blogger. I know my commenting on blogs has dropped off and a lot of that is because of the commenting systems used. If you use Disqus I won’t comment. I often want to keep what I say on a blog off of other social media platforms and Disqus doesn’t allow me to do that while adding a link back to this blog in case someone wants to visit. I don’t mind using my name and email but don’t want to be tied in to having to login to something to comment. And once I make my mind up about something it can take a while to sway me. A bit like self-serve checkouts – I am still really opposed to them.
The other thing is that because the blogging landscape has changed and because brands have entered the fray there just doesn’t seem to be the quality of blogs around now like there used to be. Maybe I’m just missing the underground blogging movement that does exist? Maybe I’m just seeing the blogs that are working with blogging agencies and writing a lot of sponsored content. Usually when I see the words ‘sponsored post’ at the top of a blog post I don’t bother reading it.
I know I’ve got advertising on my blog, ie BlogHer. I must take it off actually because I hardly earn anything off it. I joined BlogHer back in their infancy and they were recently bought out. It’s also American based so many of the things they do offer bloggers just aren’t really worth my while, or available to me as an Australian.
Ten years ago when I started this blog my son was three years old. He’s now 14. When he was three I wrote a lot about parenting but I don’t feel I can do that any more. I took a lovely photo of him and the dog lying on the floor having a boy-dog moment and as I took it he told me not to put it on social media. I respect that and I respect that his life isn’t fodder for this blog although there’s lots I could write about. Navigating the teen world and technology would be one standout for me. Anyone else struggling with that? We’ve come to a truce on that front for now I think and without going into detail of how we got there, he’s allowed maximum four hours a day on the xbox on weekends only. No xbox during the school week. Now the computer and internet time is a different story.
If you still read my blog, or you’ve just found it I’d love to hear your comments using whatever details you would like.
Anyway, another half hour has passed so I’d better get on and make the most of this shorter day.
