I'm in a blog bog.....

...no not my blog, can't be bogged down with this one as I don't update it often enough, but I'm getting a bit swamped with reading other blogs.

The first blog I was ever introduced to was my daughter's, then she guided me to some of the blogs of her friends, mainly after a big group gathering or holiday because her friends would post their own photos and highlights etc. It felt like being a fly on the wall of my daughter's life, isn't that every mother's dream? Of course the comments made on these posts are often by other of their friends that I don't know and a few click click clicks later and I find I've bookmarked and am regularly reading more blogs than I should healthily give my time to!

But how can I motivate myself to get off this laptop and not just quickly check on the worlds of those people I feel I've got to know. Those who give their own ideas for Home Educating their children I find interesting as my grandchildren are HE'd. Some writers of course are more interesting than others but they all offer some form of entertainment, either giving me recipes or crafts to try, insights to living in other parts of the world (just found a lovely writer in Israel), families who have bravely changed their lifestyles (emigrating or living in a camper van) or just by being so beautifully written!

Hey I'm middle aged and no longer working so with plenty of time to now explore an internet I never really had time for before, so what's the problem apart from my very under exercised body! Then the next stage in my internet education was to find out that all is not 'real'! OK I'm not totally gullible and realise that even I may slightly exaggerate when I describe an event so it reads better, however, during a discussion with my daughter it was explained to me that someone who is a close friend with my favourite blogger has confirmed that lots of it is fiction just to make a great story. Another person on my bookmarks who often amazed me as she is such a prolific blogger, it was then pointed out, that she would never have the time for her or her family to actually do all that her posts implied they do and be able to blog about it too! But why? Well the whole commercial side of the internet was explained how people can earn money blogging and linking and reviewing and of course promoting no end of external products and projects and of course how you need to promote your own blog/twitter/facebook/on line shop to increase the following, to increase the promotion and ultimately to increase the income! Makes the openness of people sharing their lives all sound a bit fake and sordid doesn't it?

So today I've had a look through my bookmarks and decided that actually I'm not going to delete any of them, does it really matter what is truth or fiction if I'm not required to act on what I'm reading. I love reading novels as much as biographies so the same must be true for blogs. I may read a blog where I know the writer is pouring out her deepest feelings wanting the page to carry some of her pain, this is therapy for that writer and if her readers send hugs and words of support that must be so helpful and not sordid at all.

So I'll keep reading and blogging and trying to motivate myself to look away and do something more active for a while. And to any readers of this blog I'd like to say I'm not clever enough to write fiction and have absolutely no want to earn money from this as it would mean a commitment I'm far too lazy to make, so what you read is 'real' but in the great scheme of things do you care!
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