I’ve been a little quiet on the blogging front lately, the relationship blogging more so than anything else.
Reason being?
In the words of my guru, Bridget Jones, the ultimate (british) single girl:
“I have a boyfriend”
Well, boyfriend is probably not the right word, man friend, someone I was dating, “its complicated”.
Through analysing blog hits and Twitter interactions I’ve realised that I’m more popular “online” when my love life is going disastorously wrong. When I’m being ditched over email, friendzoned or dicked around by yet another imbecile as I continue on my quest of kissing slimey frogs in the hopes of finding my Prince Charming (we’re all adult enough to know now that “Prince Charming” doesn’t really exist, right?) I’m riding high in the blog hits. I’ve been told before that my blog is super relateable, that every girl has “been there”, that I’m like the Carrie Bradshaw of Stoke and that my dating anecdotes have had readers giggling in their seats
To deliver quality content to quench the appetite of my “single gal” readers who want visit my blog to nod along in unison at the absolute unfairness of dating, curse the names of men who done them wrong and in general allow me to make them feel better about the state of their dating situation, I basically have to make myself “relateable”. By relateable I mean unhappy. How can I write about the trials and tribulations of the life of a single gal when I wouldn’t really class myself as single anymore? When I replaced the nights I’d spend cackling over Plenty of Fish profiles or waiting for some guy to text me back with laying on the chest of the beardy guy I was dating watching crap nighttime TV, I also lost my primary blog demographic.
And then out of nowhere I find myself listening to Taylor Swift songs and having an almost complete body breakdown to the new Ed Sheeran album, watching my phone constantly for some glimmer of communication and throwing sausage rolls in the bin after two bites because I’ve lost my appetite. And then it comes again: the inspiration to write, ideas, relateable posts full of relateable feelings and I’m jotting down sentences left right and centre. When I relayed a couple of post ideas to a friend through a stream of tears where you have snot hanging off the end of your nose she exclaimed “oh god, your blog is going to be so good again!”
Again?
Blog hits + readers + opportunities + followers + that feeling of being popular = good, right? Of course. Isn’t that what we as bloggers strive for? And even as non bloggers, everybody likes being popular.
I had a post to put up today which was written through a tear induced headache at 2am. A witty post about “how to deal with breakups” in attempt to make you all giggle into your coffee or splutter over your packet of Mini Cheddars. A post that I was sure would gain good hits, comments and those “I LOVED THIS POST!” tweets that I love to receive. But I realised that although (as the song goes) “there’s no business like showbusiness they smile when they are low”, when blogging the ups, downs, highs, lows and woes of a single gal in Stoke, its equally as important to just be sad when you feel like being sad.
Instead of me using my upset and heartache to try and entertain my readers by being predictably “relateably funny” maybe I should use this as a platform to be honest. To say that its okay to lose your appetite, want to cry at your desk, develop an obsessive twitch everytime your phone goes and feel like its the end of the world when a “relationship” ends.
We’re all human at the end of the day, even bloggers.
Feeling totes emosh after reading this, felt right there with you from the highs to the lows (and all the feels for discarded sausage rolls) totally didn’t mean that to rhyme either. Oh well. Just keep doing how you do, pretty sure everyone else loves reading your blog (and not just the Bridget Jones style posts either) as much as I do. xx