Another Useless Blog Post

Do you remember when blogging was new and you were considered pretty impressive if you had one? At that point in time, blogs were used for one of two purposes; to connect with people and keep them updated on your family life or to share knowledge of something, i.e. cooking, home improvement, business, etc.

Then something happened and blogging became a trend. And trends, in my humble opinion, have a crappy way of turning things that are awesome into a giant old pain in the neck.

For example, now that blogging is a trend, there is a tremendous pressure on blog authors. You can't just sit down and write any old thought that comes into your head. No, no. It has to be epic. You want to go viral. What I want to know is who in the blue blazes thought that "going viral" was the right term for this phenom? Let me tell you what I think of when I hear the word, "viral". I think of puke and fevers and rashes and the black plague and zombies (the flesh-eating kind, not the cute love-restored-my-soul kind from "Warm Bodies"). So it would be like saying to someone, "Hey, what you said inspired me so much...I think it deserves a puke bucket, some clorox and a pair of finely constructed rubber gloves."

Nasty name aside, going "viral", can be summed up in one big fun-sucking word...pressure. People feel pressure to write that awesome blog post that everyone has to read and like and share and tweet and squeak and whatever the heck else people do with blogs now.

As human beings, we have an innate desire to impart something of ourselves and give to the masses. We want to feel like we have a piece in this giant jigsaw puzzle of life. I think this is especially true for stay-at-home mothers, whose roll in society is generally more restricted and often difficult to navigate. I think this is why many blogs began with, and are penned by, mothers. And I get that. We all have something to share and we all want to feel like what we share matters to someone, anyone. A dear friend (and coincidentally one of my favorite blogging moms) once told me that she felt like blogging gave her a sense of camaraderie with other moms. It made her feel connected to the outside world in a way that can sometimes be difficult to do in other ways. I whole-heartedly agree.

But we've created a bit of a monster.

Because now we are all stressed out and nervous. We can't write unless we know it will be good and it isn't good unless it gets shared and goes zombie and everyone is posting it on their tweeting-face-news-feed. And when it doesn't happen that way, we have surely failed and what we say is, as we suspected all along, not really that important. Thus the initial intention of blogging, to share something that we have inside us, is now biting us on the nose and keeping us cowering behind our keyboards, afraid that what we say isn't worthy.

Not only do we have to have a stellar, awe-inspiring blog post, we also need two titles. Have you noticed that? It's not just, "Public Toilets" anymore. It's "Public Toilets: Why I Will Never Walk into a Public Restroom and Have My Eyes Rest upon a Public Pee-Splattered Porcelain Menace to Society Again". As if naming a blog post isn't hard enough already...now I have to come up with a title and an accompanying catch phrase. Smack my head. (That's right, I wrote it out instead of using the abbreviated form...take that trend setters).

And as if that's not discouragement enough, we have entire blog posts floating around dedicated to the decomposition and mockery of other blog posts. It's like blogging snipers. They hide and wait. I swear, I think they float around cyber space waiting for a victim. Instead of taking a few minutes to stop and actually use that lump of zombie chow on our heads, we jump in like a pack of wolves ready to rip each other's work to shreds in hope that it will thrust us into the viral lime-light. Never mind that every single person who sits down to write anything has, at the very least, a beating heart and a head full of thoughts, experiences and reasons, and that freaking irresistible urge to share it with someone in this universe. We don't think about that anymore. Because blogging isn't really about sharing anymore. It's about popularity.

Maybe it's just my inner-outcast shining through, but I have a beef with popularity.

My grandmother used to say that we should be educated for the sake of education. To learn, to grow, to expand our mind and our beliefs and our capacity. The part of me that shares her genetic code beckons me to write for the sake of writing. For the sole purpose of taking something that is inside me and giving it away because it does matter and it is worth it. And it's not about going viral or having crafty titles or being that blog that helps someone finally realize that they actually want children, or want to become a chef or finally unlocks the secret to removing supposedly washable marker from any body part (but seriously, does anyone know how to do that, because I would like to read a blog post about that).

It's about being another tree in the forest, another star in the sky, another fish in the sea, another stupid blog post...and being completely okay with that.