"You're the only person I know who blogs," said my sister on the phone the other day. She reads one or two blogs regularly and, with one being mine, she's not making claims to being the biggest blog reader out there. But her statement got me thinking. Apart from the blogging community that I would say I'm in, I also don't know anyone else who blogs. No one at the school. No one in my friendship group. No one that I've bumped into at the hairdressers or beauty salon (I know, I'm high maintenance). No one that my husband knows.
I guess, as a blogger, you just expect that everyone must know bloggers. Isn't everyone blogging? It certainly feels like they are. The community is bustling, overflowing, clambering over, even. Infiltrating all aspects of our lives. Seeping out of our pores. We dream in blog post titles. Every scene we experience, we assess in terms of writability or Instagram worthiness. We chat to other bloggers all hours of the day and night. We meet up with bloggers. We chat blogging. We soak it up in its entirety. Sat at our laptops tapping away, prettifying our sites, wanting for nothing other than for feelings, emotions, to be poured into our words. So, with this in mind, how can we not know other bloggers in our community? It doesn't stack up for us. We have become so all-consumed in the world of blogging. Surely, everyone blogs! Have we lost sight of reality?
Jill Walker Rettberg, professor of digital culture at the University of Bergen, did some research into the question of how many people blog and in a roundabout way summed up that most people don't blog. This made me smile. Shock, horror, bloggers! We are in the minority. Would you believe it?
But to find an actual figure was not easy. According to Hosting Facts (2016), there are 2.7 million blog posts published every day. Wordpress is responsible for 76.5 million blogs. The numbers are high. But when compared with the world population, Jill Walker Rettberg makes an excellent point. Most people really don't blog.
I guess the point of this post, being a little tongue in cheek if you hadn't already picked up on that (!), is to maybe sometimes, close the laptop, go out in the world around you without constantly considering it from a blogging perspective, an Instagram post. Live the moment more. Mix with people who don't blog (yes they really do exist), get another perspective on life. Having been blogging a relatively short time, I get how consuming it is. How the reality of life gets warped. It's so easy to do. But there's a world out there that needs to be lived without constant documentation. I'm not talking about a blogging detox or a break from social media. I'm talking about an everyday balance. Make blogging part of our days. Not our entire days.
OK, for those who blog for a living this post probably doesn't apply to you, but there are many of us who aren't blogging for a living. However, the reality of the world away from blogging still needs to be appreciated by all, I guess.
Don't get me wrong, I adore blogging and the people I have 'met.' But, I'm guilty of immersing myself perhaps too much into blogging. But having been pushed recently to wonder whether I still want to blog, my sister raised a valid question. It popped blogging into perspective for me. I teach the piano but I don't think everyone plays. We ski as a family but I don't think everyone skis. I blog but, actually, not everyone does. I'm off for coffee now in that huge non-blogging world. Fancy that ... just saying!
Helen blogs at https://justsayingmum.com