I’m as guilty as anyone of writing sappy posts about my kids. The mommy blogging world is full of such posts, in fact. Sickly sweet posts, dripping with ooey gooey love and laced with fuzzy focused pictures detailing smiling faces, dozing babies and chubby cheeks galore. At the same time, you have posts where date nights are detailed; delicious hours spent away from home while the kids are happily cared for by doting grandparents while the parents are able to eat out at decidedly non-child friendly restaurants and view entire movies (uninterrupted!) in movie theaters and spending exorbitant amounts of money on popcorn. And then over here you have the mom who has gotten a fabulous writing gig at a fabulous website and soon will be making fabulous money. Or something like that. And what about that blogger over there who is either publishing a book or is included in a book or knows someone firsthand who has a new book out? The fulfillment they must feel! How about those ladies who blog about their girl’s nights out and seem to have so many beautiful, wonderful and fun friends to hang out with? They sure have it all, don’t they?
No. No, they don’t.
The thing is, I’m as guilty of feeling these things as anyone else. It’s easy when you read a plethora of blogs to see these little glimpses into someone else’s life and feel jealousy. To wish that you had a little piece of their life. If you had what they had, after all, then maybe you’d be happy. Or happier. Life would be better.
The thing is, no one has it great. In fact, I wonder if “great” even exists. The blogger who waxes poetic about their cherubic infant is probably doing so in order to keep from tossing them out the window after they kept them up all night the night before. The gal who scored the fabulous writing gig is probably feeling either a lot of pressure to write for her new bosses and bring in the traffic or is feeling burnt out with blogging altogether or worries that the money she’ll be making won’t be quite enough to cover all those bills that keep pouring in. The people who have ready and willing babysitters every time they turn around don’t always have the money to go out in the first place or have to deal with the inherent consequences of having relatives living nearby. They probably wish, at times, that they had less parental influence in their lives. And the women who seem to have a never-ending supply of buddies to hang out with? Probably deal with their own issues and social politics and whatever else is required to keep those friendships running smoothly. That or their spouses give them untold amounts of grief for wanting to spend time away from their families.
I guess my point is that we shouldn’t look at someone and think they have it all just because of what we read on their blog. These blogs are merely snapshots of our lives. A moment in time. A still life portrait of what life is like. When I talk about how adorable Evie is getting (boy howdy, is she ever getting adorable), I’m not mentioning the half dozen other issues that keep me up at night with worry and stress. The blog is an outlet, after all. I can write about whatever catches my fancy, diffuse frustration, find closure and distract myself from whatever is bugging me at the moment. And believe me, there is just about ALWAYS something bugging me. That’s just the way it is.
We’re all in the same boat here, aren’t we? We’re all mothers who question our choices and our lives just about every single day. We all love our children. We all have hard days. The great thing about these blogs is that through it all, we have each other to support us when we’re unsure, to cheer us on when we experience good fortune, commiserate when we’re frustrated and give us a boost when we’re feeling down. And God Bless it too, I don’t know what I’d do without it all.
{ 7 comments }
cagey (100 comments.) 05.23.08 at 1:23 pm
Did I miss something? Or are you just talking about some of the general negativity towards the mommy bloggers lately?
I was really sad to see all the negativity the past week about staying at home full-time.
You are right though - blogs are just snapshots. Some of us choose to portray certain aspects over others. I do try to keep the bad stuff and try not to use my space for venting. Probably that makes me look as if I wear rose-colored glasses? I just hate to just my space for griping when overall, I like my life.
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Britt (43 comments.) 05.23.08 at 1:41 pm
Amen!
Great post Marilyn. I often feel a little jealous about other bloggers (especially ones with paying gigs. Dude! I do this for free!) but you’re so right! No one has ‘it all’ and there’s no reason to feel jealousy toward others. I probably have something that other people don’t have. We each have out turn.
I was just talking about this with a friend today, so this is the perfect post!
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Marilyn 05.23.08 at 1:57 pm
It’s just a general post. Like you said, there’s all sorts of negativity going around these days and this has been stirring around in my head for a while. I gripe and whine and I gush about the good stuff too. Even then, I’m not sharing EVERYTHING. I just wanted to put this out there, that we’re all in this together.
Queen of Shake Shake (11 comments.) 05.23.08 at 2:35 pm
And see, I just saw that picture of the cloth diaper in your previous post and now I miss cloth diapers.
Remind me how much they stink in the diaper pail, please?
ha!ha!
I think most mommy bloggers are mature enough (omg, did I just use the word mature? *shudder*) to realize there’s a lot of crap underneath the pretty snapshot of life they are reading.
But mommy bloggers are people too and prone to people feelings like insecurity and jealousy. And also regret for times gone by.
Making fun of myself for my insecure, regretful and jealous moments is my therapy to get over it. heh
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Marilyn 05.23.08 at 2:45 pm
Making fun of myself for my insecure, regretful and jealous moments is my therapy to get over it.
Yes! This! When it gets silly is when the blogger goes beyond venting and actually wallows in the jealousy. That’s not good for anyone.
Ha! I just did a post on my cloth diaper blog about how I eliminate diaper pail stink too! So… not so much with the pail stink? Sorry about that.
Loralee (131 comments.) 05.23.08 at 7:44 pm
I have blog jealousy.
I have people who have emailed me that they are jealous of some aspects of my life. I also know that if they could even see a tiny fraction of the hell my life can be a lot of the time they would have zero envy about my life.
I wouldn’t mind blogging more about the negative but the point it that the fallout wouldn’t effect me alone, so I try to keep other people out of it but still pipe up from time to time when things are really in the toilet.
Sometimes it leaves me feeling like a big, fat, faker, but it is what it is, I guess.
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Victoria (1 comments.) 05.25.08 at 6:01 am
OK, I officially love you. I am so happy you posted this.
You hit the nail on the head. I’ve had moms tell me they are jealous I don’t have a nanny raising my kidlets. Had some tell me their dream is to be self employed like I am. If they only knew, the amount of pressure!
Yes, I may have interviewed some celebrity yesterday but I’m the first person to tell everyone that all my friends live across the country and I have to fly to have a “girl’s night out”. 5 hour flight for laughter and lobster ravioli. Um, not so fun. The first person to point out I’m insecure about my “grande cabesa”. Always happy to tell people I fell up the stairs at Starbucks. Do I think I have it all? Nope.
No one lives a perfect life. And what we post for the most part is a quick 5 minutes out of our day. I wish more moms reading blogs realized that. I think sometimes when our day isn’t going well, it’s easy to just think the “grass is greener” and envy someone else who on paper/screen seems to be living life like its golden.
Motherhood is insane and we all find ourselves questioning the decisions we make and learning from mistakes. Every single last one of us.
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