By day, I run an online youth magazine helping teenagers access important services. This involves everything editorial to online marketing, training colleagues and policy-making – occasionally escaping the office to meet the future leaders of the UK: Youth Parliament – all whilst drinking a lot of tea before running home to have fun with my toddler.
Other interests include: travel, up-cycling, home decor, moseying around vintage markets and pretending to be a photographer. If there is a spare moment in the day, after also being a mum and wife, I can be found glued to a glossy fashion mag.
UK and Ibiza - please contact me for freelance writing work.
By night I am a nocturnal mother, sleep tweeter, and secret blogger.
Wow - the blogging world - blogosphere - it's massive isn't it? I hadn't quite realised the extent of how many people blog and there are even awards for them! And then there's the whole blogging etiquette (blogiquette?) on commenting, tweeting and facebooking.
I was recently tagged in a sweet viral twitter post that is doing the rounds about getting to know other bloggers; where you answer questions about yourself then tag others. What a lovely idea and a fab way to network.
But this got me thinking. It didn't sit comfortably with me. Why? Because as a general rule; I freak out about my online identity, having seen perhaps a more sinister side to the interweb in my job. So why write a blog? I hear you ask. And I've been asking the same thing ever since. It’s just I think I have found an outlet; one where I can be creative, share experiences and (hopefully) make people laugh.
My husband and I agreed that we wouldn't put any personal details or photos of our son on the superhighway. So when I see my friends' cute baby photos on Facebook it desperately makes me want to post with pride about our little pea too, but I have to remind myself of 'our rule'.
This is purely a personal choice and I would never berate anyone who chooses otherwise. It's just I feel there's sometimes too much sharing and ‘selling of our souls’ in the virtual world and I feel one day, very soon, it's all going to explode. Someone very leading in the web world once told me our digital footprint and personal details will be worth more than oil one day and it stuck with me ever since.
In ten years, cyberspace will be on a whole other level; our children's generation will be connected in a way we couldn't possibly dream of. But in the meantime, we want our boy's virtual identity to be his choice, and when he's old enough we can have these discussions with him. As I say in the small print of this blog: when he's a teen it's already going to be embarrassing enough that his mum has written a blog about the 'baby days'.
Milkin' It is really essentially about you: it’s about the crazy things we all do as new parents that you can relate to and laugh at. The two Shirleys? They are myself and a relative who have suddenly become caricatures of ourselves - hopefully you can recognise someone you know in them too. And me? Well, I want to continue to write as Media Darlin' (I can't stop at the moment, it just keeps flowing). If in that process it captures people’s imaginations enough for me to be published - either on or offline - and that puts some cash in the kitty, then I’m onto a winner!
The Internet is amazing and blogging has opened up new opportunities I never knew existed. I want to network with talented, like-minded and nice people, (I am very friendly, honest!) it’s just I like to do it in the privacy of my own iCave.
welcome, and there are plenty of anon bloggers out there who are succesful so no reason you should not be. As you say things are going to change, just as they have in the last 10 years.
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