I love blogging. I really do. It has opened up my world and I have made lovely friends and it has enabled me to give my son some fantastic experiences but it does come with a draw back for me.Blogging anxiety.

When I first started to blog, I wrote as therapy. My world had fallen apart. My pregnancy had gone all kinds of wrong, I developed post natal depression, my husband left, I became disabled and lost one or two very good friends in the process. I was receiving support from family, friends and professionals but I needed an outlet in between times.

I found blogs that were written by people who shared similar experiences. I gained strength by reading their posts and then writing my own. I didn’t write for anyone to read, just to get the words out of my head as they went round and round all night long. I kept it a secret from all my family and friends. One or two people may have read a post of mine but I wouldn’t have known.

After a year, I started to look into this whole blogging malarky. I joined online blogging advice, support and tech groups and started to read about bounce rates, DA’s, plug ins, self hosting and the odd bit of coding.
Slowly but surely I dipped my toe into the tech side and decided to go for it. I was going to brand my blog, go self hosted, change blogging platforms and quietly let people know that I had a blog.

It was scary but so much fun. I very quickly made contacts, listened and learned and I feel, in my first year of blogging openly, made a lot of progress and have done quite well. I haven’t monetised my blog (I don’t earn a penny from it) and so I don’t work with a lot of companies or have a huge amount of PR contacts but I’m happy. I’m proud to be a BIgJigs review vlogger and have great review relationships with some companies. I hope to monetise when Bear starts school in September as I’ll have more time to devote to it.

I’ve had one post that had over 20,000 views in 24hrs, and a few others that have had thousands but I don’t have the biggest readership out there. I’m kind of in the middle I think.

I’m just outside the top 500 in one parent blogging rating system that supposedly has 8,000 -10,000 blogs in it, I hover at about 150 in another and my social media stats are not too bad.

The problem with being at this stage is I’m doing ok but in order to do better, I need to do more which with chronic illness and being a single mum, is pretty hard. Sometimes, especially when Bear is unwell, I can be wiped out for over a week and there are lots of other things that take precedence over writing.

Now is the time of year for awards. The MADS (Mum and Dad awards) and BIBs (Brilliance in Blogging) are open for votes. A lot of bloggers are quite rightly writing posts to let their non blogging readers know that they can vote if they’d like to. It needs to be done. If you don’t tell anyone, how will they know but it’s a hard thing to do. I don’t feel good enough to ask for votes. I don’t want anyone to think that I think I’m something I’m not and I kind of feel as though there’s no point.

I know I shouldn’t compare my beginning to someone else’s middle – I can’t be as good or as high in the charts as the more established bloggers but the reality is that there are other bloggers that started at the same time as me and are doing better.

I’m going to keep going, but it’s hard to not feel a bit rubbish now and then. I wish I could be more controversial or funny but that’s just not me. I wonder where I’ll be next year. Hopefully still here as I love my little spot on the internet.

This isn’t a pity post or a veiled attempt at asking for votes. If you do want to vote for me or any other blogger, the details are below but please do not feel any pressure to do so. It’s nice to be nominated but I’ve not got a chance in hell of winning!

Thanks for reading and for your support. Your comments mean so much to me.

Love