You might not know it but I have actually been blogging for 10 years this coming summer. Way back when I started I had moved back home from Canada the previous year and I was getting ready to go to university as a mature student to read English. At the time, I was reading quite a lot and writing reviews on some websites which I got paid tiny amounts for. A member of one of those sites gave me some great advice and that was to also create a blog as somewhere to cross post the reviews. I got on it immediately and it wasn’t long before I started receiving review copies from publishers and I carried on all the way through my degree and I think until 2014 or 2015.
After finishing university, moving to Norfolk, working full time and getting married I just didn’t have the same time for reading as I did before. I dabbled with another blog which didn’t work out and I sort of had a bit of a break, only posting little bits about our lives and our new house, until I got pregnant with Erin.
I was actually a terrible blogger while I was pregnant. I had such a bad pregnancy that I didn’t feel like writing about it much at all and the blog kind of got forgotten about until Erin was actually born. At some point I started taking things more seriously, had a name change and went official with my own domain. Now, 3 years later I am so lucky to be able to do this as my full time job but blogging is so very different from when I first started all those years ago.
This year I am really trying to think about what I want from my blog and what I want to put out there. Over the past 3 years I have written a lot of personal posts about pregnancy, birth, my marriage and our day to day life. I’m not really afraid of any topic and I like to be as truthful and real as I can be. However, I feel as though I have failed my readers in a way.
The blog’s name is Me, him, the dog and a baby! because I wanted something that would sort of cover everything and anything. Erin might not be a baby anymore (she’ll always be my baby) and we might not have the dog any more but I still feel like the name fits. I write about John now and again and he has even written posts himself.
The one thing I feel that I’m not giving you is myself, which is a bit strange seeing as I’m the one who does everything here. Writing personal posts is one thing but I have hidden behind the words and the pretty pictures of Erin or absolutely anything else. Something you don’t see very much around here, and on the social media channels (except for YouTube) is me. There are very few pictures of me because I am usually the one with the camera capturing what’s going on.
This year I am determined to change that. The name of the blog may cover everyone but I want people to know me. I want people to know the person whose words they are reading and the life they’re spending time to get to know. Bare with me though. I’m not photogenic, I’m not very stylish and I’m really bad at having my own picture taken but I’ll get there.