A Look at Bloggers on Blogging

Bloggers on Blogging: Heather Armstrong     

For my first venture into blogging on this site, I was tasked with choosing one of Rebecca's Pocket/Rebecca's Blood's posts interviewing bloggers on blogging. After perusing the articles I found one that struck surprisingly close to home. Heather Armstrong, a stay-at-home mom who's now turned her blog into a lovely looking website, has her own podcast, still updates on the regular, and published a book, is the creator of the website/blog dooce.com. Her posts focus on her life raising her kids and dealing with depression, and her writing style is very open and full of jokes.

With that quick intro done with, I want to share four things that had me leaning into my screen to catch every word. (TLDR: Armstrong writes very similar to how I do, and copes with things a similar way to how I do. It was really interesting to read about and that's a major aspect of why blogs are so successful.)

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First, she was fired from her job because of the things she said when she started blogging. I've heard horror stories in the past about things like this, but Heather Armstrong was apparently the first.

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Second, some of her little side bleebs are amazing and things I would/do type when I'm writing like:

• "...The client wants more purple. Make it more purple." (I know the feeling. Ugh, it's the worst when it makes the design look like Barney vomit.)
• "...I try to tell a story that someone's mother as well as someone's drunk uncle might find amusing, even if neither of them have anything in common with a housewife who lives in Utah." (Advice I've taken to heart from many a content creator and my own observations.)
• "...I immediately copy it to a subfolder called 'Hate is all you need'..." (Not gonna lie, I'm borrowing this idea if my YouTube endeavors ever attract that kind of attention. I love this idea.)

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Third, she's like an older, kind of me. I too have a nice case of ADD and her paragraph about how it affects her writing process had me going "YES! SOMEONE WHO GETS IT!" I've had many teachers require rough drafts of things and it's made me bang my head against a wall because it's not how my brain works. Which, when you think about it is one of the reasons why blogging, especially blogs like Armstrong's are so amazing and get the attention they do. You can relate to them in one way or another and that feeling is really great when the going gets tough. 

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Finally, she talks about humor and how it's a part of her life, upbringing, and writing style. This also really resonated with me as my dad is one of the funniest guys I know and while I'm not as outspoken as Armstrong has become I hold a similar belief that "We're all in this shit together, why not laugh about it?"