Old dogs, new tricks

They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks but hopefully I’m proving that wrong.

Up until a couple of months ago I was completely new to blogging, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and the rest. I used spreadsheets and word processing regularly for work, happily emailed, Internet shopped and researched all manner of things but that was as far as it went. I didn’t even read any blogs and pretty much my only knowledge of them was from watching the film Julie and Julia which portrays the blogger Julie Powell’s quest to cook all the recipes in Julia Child’s first book. I did though have a vague sort of idea that it was something I might quite like to explore at some stage and one day found myself purchasing Blogging for Dummies. This suggested that the easiest way to learn about blogging was to actually set something up so that’s what I did, purely as an exercise and with no intent to take it any further. Another chapter talked about ways to promote blogs and that’s how my Twitter account was born. I spent many hours reading my guide, drawing pictures for my profiles, playing around with email accounts, scanning pictures, writing profiles and the like. I still saw all this simply as an exercise but, completely unexpectedly, I found that I loved the Twitter world and found myself becoming immersed in it. I loved feeling that simply by responding to someone’s tweet I could make a real difference to them, perhaps by sharing an experience that I had had with one of my children. And that is the beauty of Twitter, that there is always someone out there who can hear what you’re saying and respond with a nod, a smile, some words of support. I like the way you can form bonds with people purely based on what they say, rather than being influenced by how they look, where they live, what car they drive. And how when I feel like I’m having a bad day I can be brought down to earth by seeing just how difficult it can be for some people every single day of their lives.

I had absolutely no idea how many people out there blogged and must say that I am totally in awe of the many who seem to manage to do this on a daily basis. And the sheer variety of subject matter is incredible; I could spend my entire day flitting through blogs and still only scratch the surface. It really does open up the world.

I’m not quite sure how my children view this epiphany of mine: bemused, amused, despairing of my poor IT skills, resigned to the fact that I’ve been too busy grappling with my computer to bake a cake. Mostly I think they’re pleased that I’ve found something that gives me pleasure.

It has been (and continues to be) a hard journey. Some things have been easy to set up, others less so. Sometimes I wish I could just hand everything over to someone else and ask them to set me up a fully integrated system and then I could get on with the fun bits. I get frustrated at how difficult I find some things and feel like tearing my hair out. Other times I feel proud of myself for getting this far. And it certainly has taught me loads even though I am still nowhere near as adept as even my youngest child. I must say that it has given me a little more empathy for my boys’ inability to master the workings of the washing machine or dishwasher. The only difference is I am trying to overcoming my shortcomings on a daily basis, they are not (boys please take note)!

I’m still not sure who exactly I’m writing my blog for. Is it for others, for myself, for my children? I suppose in reality it’s a combination of those, primarily a means for me to reflect on my life, both past and present, but also a means to share my experiences with other parents. If I help just one person in their journey through parenthood then it will be worth it. But also I hope my children will enjoy reading it, if not now then in the future. I hope it will help them understand just how much I love being a mother, how proud I am of them all and how I don’t regret a single minute of it,not even when I’m being ground down by the minutiae of daily domestic chores. It can be a tumultuous journey but what else is so fulfilling, so rewarding? And I hope it will help to reassure them when they are parents themselves that no matter how hard it can be, each day is a new beginning and things will always improve.

So please bear with me on my blogging quest. It’s early days and I have much to learn. Technology doesn’t always do what I want it to do and I have a habit of mucking things up big time; hopefully though I’ll get there in the end.  In the meantime I’m enjoying the learning process, enjoying making new friends and enjoying setting myself new challenges. Just as long as the technology doesn’t change too quickly or I’ll never catch up!