3 posts tagged “blogging”

The last time I posted to this blog was nearly a year ago.  How time flies!

When I was last here I was blogging often and taking advantage of all Vox had to offer in the way of groups, neighbourhoods, etc.  It seemed like a great place and, although I had made many blogs before at various places, I thought I would be staying here long term.

The problem was that while I was blogging away I had some serious financial issues on my mind and blogging here was my way of avoiding them.  So one day I decided that I had procrastinated long enough and had to do something to fix things... and what better way to do this than by blogging!

So I looked into ways I could make money from blogging.  Most of it seemed to suck big time; building blogs for adsense etc.  But then I found something I could make money from.  Adult.

And I set to work with a vengeance.  Today I have hundreds of blogs and sites selling adult material and making a reasonable living for me.  Most of the sites are on auto, so once they are set up they only need checking now and again.  But I wanted to go one step further.  I wanted to be a 'respectable blogger'.

So lately I have been creating blogs in mainstream and working as a freelance writer too.

But the catch here is that mainstream blogs can't be 'put on auto' so easily and freelance writing is damn hard work.  The pay isn't that great either (compared to adult), until you are well established and of course to attain that you need to build an online presence via social bookmarking, blog commenting, article submisions, etc, etc.  I'm getting there, but it's tough and 'being social' just to establish a 'brand' kind of sucks I think.  I want to be sociable because I feel like it, not because I need to network.  So basically, I am not very good at the 'social marketing' stuff.

And I think I've reached blogging burn out too.  There is only so much unique content anyone can produce without having a brain fade.  It's taken me nearly a year to reach it, which can't be bad, but it's still a problem.

So what am I doing to 'chill out'?  I'm blogging of course, here at Vox!  Probably not the most sensible thing to do, but, hey, I never have taken the sensible option.

And at least I can be sociable here without networking.

I just hope Vox hasn't changed that much, though from a few posts I have read I think it may have.

We'll see...

Writing my comments on a previous entry, about political ideologies and how I think they sit within the political spectrum, acted like a wake-up call to my brain, or, at least, a reminder.

For the last year or so, I have been an 'interested spectator', slowly vegetating on the sidelines while other more active bloggers have got involved in political debates.  And yet I used to be intensely political.  I had (still have I suppose ...) a blog which I updated daily, full of my comments on political events.  I even had a growing band of followers (and some regular opponents) who debated within my comments section.  Although I'm (by birth anyway) a 'Brit' and (was) more knowledgeable about (and often insensed by) UK politics, it never stopped me commentating on Bush, Cheney, Coulter, et al; or on European or South American politics come to that.  As someone with a decidedly 'leftist' and sceptical outlook, any case of political, social, racial, sexual, or, in fact, human injustice I encountered was fodder for my scathing comments and, if it was a 'slow news' day, or if I was too busy to write something myself, then I would always post part of an article, or a link with a small comment by the side.

In fact, I was a total 'political animal', devouring news and fighting injustice via the net.  And, whenever I could, I joined rallies and sometimes even spoke at meetings on any cause I found worth fighting for, and, of course, there were many.

But then, in the words of that immortal song (for me anyway ...) by Jarvis Cocker, Something Changed.   'Life' took over in a big way.

My family developed a host of problems.  My mother became ill and needed constant care; my children had various and often serious 'complications' in their lives that it seemed only I could help with; my husband suffered victimisation at work from a truly hateful new boss and eventually took voluntary redundancy as a consequence; my husband's own family also had problems which he had to deal with; and I, along with most of my department, lost my lecturing job due to funding cuts and ended up working as a temp, doing whatever jobs provided money to help pay the bills.  Because of our severe drop in income,  our finances suffered big time, and  we ended up deeply in debt.

In fact, every day seemed to produce more strains on our resources and, eventually, on our ability to cope with life as we knew it.  Me and my husband ended up in the depths of despair.  And it seemed like there was no way out.

My husband 'coped' by playing his music loud and surfing the net, joining forums discussing anything from politics and technology to humour and (that great male internet 'stress-buster') porn.  He mentally locked himself away from the world ... and eventually from me too.

In the end I didn't cope.  I was  worn out, overworked and underpaid, and it seemed that everyone (apart from my husband who didn't want to know anything or anyone) wanted a piece of me.  I had no time for my own problems, including trying to recuperate from a couple of fairly major kidney operations.  I had to be all things to all people .... except to myself it seemed.  I floundered for a while, metaphorically trying to thrash my way through a sea of mud and shit .... and then I went under.

The 'breakdown' was actually a bit of a relief.  Not at first maybe, as I was too paranoid to look at things from a rational perspective and see that it was my way of coping.  I just completely 'shut down'.  I staggered through the day on a diet of valium and anti-depressants, supplemented by the occasional visit to a therapist. Nothing got through that pill-enhanced haze: not my husband; not my children; not our financial problems; nothing.  Nada.  I had shut down the hatches, locked all the doors, and escaped within myself.

When I had typed my political blog, courageously (as I saw it) 'outing' the tyrants of this world, I had viewed the world from afar, closeted in what some would call my 'ivory tower' of academia, although it never was that; a working class woman working in academia and going home to 'real life' every day is never really closeted, but I could certainly remain a little detached from the harsh realities of life ......while everything was ok in my own.

But it takes a strong person to keep on going, to keep on fighting on behalf of others, when their own life is in tatters.  I was not that strong.

The therapy, or the pills (or most probably just me) eventually worked and I slowly dug myself out of the pit of depression (nowadays it's always hovering like a spectre in the background, just waiting for its opportunity to pounce, but most of the time I can recognise the symptoms and steer my way through the bulk of it).  But my husband still hadn't entirely climbed out of the pit he had dug himself.  So I forced him to sit down and talk to me. 

Well, we talked and argued and ranted at each other about our situation, but it helped, because eventually we came to a decision: 'Sod the lot of it!'  My husband had been thinking about taking a contract for work in Spain, but had dismissed it because of finding funds to live out there as well as in the UK.  Now we just looked around us and looked at what we had.  We had families who we loved dearly but who were able to cope themselves (and if not, as in the case of my mum [who has alzheimers and has to live in a nursing home], we could set things in place to ensure that she was well-cared for).  They were all adults, if some were only just, and would cope if they had to. At the present time they just weren't bothering, because they thought that I would bother for them.

So we made some harsh decisions, but they were survival decisions.  Our survival.

We sold our house, paid off our debts and moved to Spain!  From the little money we had left we bought a small village house, renovated it and moved in.  We had loads of struggles learning to live in Spain (and still do), but we struggle together.  And it was, after all, a struggle we couldn't afford to lose.  We had torn ourselves away from everything and everyone we had known and loved just to survive; just to have something left that was ours.  It damn well had to work!

And in time we got the pc up and running and a (rather limited) broadband service installed.  And in time we again began to browse the net, each according to their own likes .... and I began to blog again ...... and I eventually arrived up here, taking political quizzes and writing a little about my thoughts on politics.

Maybe it's time to have another go at writing that blog......?  Or maybe not ......

I have blogs all over the place; some well-kept, others barely used (if at all!) and the reason for this is that I am a blog junky, an aspiring writer (aren't we all?), and a person who cannot make up her mind what parts of her (rather multi-faceted) personality she wants to put under blog-reader scrutiny.

I have often started off with the full intention of writing about myself - 'warts and all' - but then have chickened out on revealing who I am when someone makes a comment.  One of the reasons for this is that my views and tastes often align me with bloggers younger than myself and I imagine the horror they would feel if they knew they were having a friendly discussion with someone old enough to be their mother!  It's not a 'pretend you are young and attractive' thing either - simply that I want to communiicate with like-minded people without their (and I suppose my) presumptions about age getting in the way.  Age shouldnt be a problem, but it often is.

Then there's the 'mood' thing.  When I am feeling low is often when I want to blog the most - to 'let it all out' so to speak, but then it's so easy to get labelled as 'one of those depressed bloggers', which is only true some of the time!  So I have opened blogs just to spill the nastiness when I want to, but that means that I am only showing part of myself at these places.

And we are all eclectic human beings after all.  So why can't we have one blog where we post good things and bad; happy and sad?   I know many people do, but it never felt right to me before.  Perhaps because I try to get things 'organised'..... Not that this ever works of course, but that's another story.

 And I have a wide range of interests and opinions too - from politics to humour; from 'geek tech' stuff to cute stuff; from photography to writing just for the sake of it; from family stuff to world views; etc.

In fact, I want to be able to write about anything I like here, and not feel like apologising if a reader who has linked to me for my 'geek tech' stuff suddenly finds themselves viewing pictures of my recent holiday!  I want to be able to write my opinions here (which can be rather outspoken at times) without worrying that I could upset a reader who has read me for my 'happy' or 'cute' stuff. You get the picture.

So, can I do all those things here and do it 'no holds barred'.

I hope so.