What Type of Mommy Blogger are You?

Are you a mom who blogs? I’m sure that, by now, you’ve heard of the now-infamous New York Times article written about Bloggy Boot Camp. You know, the one with the condescending tone that slammed mommy bloggers across the board – even though the author herself identified as a mom who blogs.

The article poo-poos the conference attendees as mostly women in their 30s who drive minivans and care more about blogging than their families. Okay, so I’m a woman in my 30s who drives a minivan, but I don’t care more about blogging than my family. Has everyone forgotten that “mommy” is the operative word in the term “mommy blogger?” If I cared more about my blog than my son, I’d average more than two posts per week.

So I’d like to discuss the type of mom I am, the type of blogger I am, and the type of woman I am. I can’t arrange these neatly into little subheadings for each category; they are inextricably intertwined.

I am 31 years old, at least until November. My husband an I will be celebrating our 10 year wedding anniversary this October. My son will be 5 years old in August.

I’ve worked as a grocery store cashier, a child care worker at a home for emotionally disturbed girls, a caseworker for an apartment program for mentally ill adults, a mental health worker on the kids unit of a private psychiatric hospital, a moderator for a popular teen message board, a Google Quality Rater, a content manager for an Internet marketing company, and now the founder of my own company which provides copywriting and blogging services for businesses on the Web.

In high school and in college, I was a perfectionist and a straight-A student. I belonged to so many clubs that I took the late bus home from high school every day instead of riding the regular bus. I was the Entertainment Editor for my high school newspaper, and our advisor (the school librarian) introduced me to the Respect and Relations Committee as the head of brainwashing and communications after I tried to include subliminal messages in my newspaper articles.

In my freshman year of college, I was asked to be the Editor-in-Chief of our failing campus newspaper. I helped transform it from a rag sheet into a respectable student publication in my three year tenure as editor. I also helped update the office from using one ancient Mac and taping overlapping letter-sized pages together to make our proofs for the printer to having three modern PCs and a printer capable of creating full sized proofs to send to the printer using Quark XPress. I spent many long weekends in the newspaper office writing and editing until 3:00 or 4:00 am.

I may have failed to mention that I graduated summa cum laude from college with both my Bachelor’s and my Master’s degree in Psychology. I only attended school for four years, having entered the university’s five-year BA/MA program with a year’s worth of college credits already taken care of my the AP courses I’d taken in high school.

I had to slow down after college. I got married, got a “real job,” and joined the real world. I wouldn’t figure it out until years later, but the reason I found myself so tired all of the time was because the nasty case of mono that put a damper on my junior year of college had a much more permanent legacy. I have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, also known as CFS.

I had such panic attacks after 9/11, irrationally terrified that my husband would get drafted to fight in the war. I stopped taking the medication I was given when rational thought returned to me, but years later, the underlying anxiety and depression resurfaced, and I have a wonderful psychiatrist who helps me work through it all now.

I had postpartum depression following the birth of my son, but it went undiagnosed. Master’s degree in Psychology or not, you just can’t see these things in yourself when they’re happening. I had a hard time bonding with him for the first few months… but then it happened.

And that’s when I started my mommy blog. Yes, it started out as just a journal to keep track of TJ’s growth and development. But then it grew to be so much more. People enjoyed the articles I’d written on eBay, so I decided to put articles like that on my blog. And then I started posting more pictures. And it kept growing.

I also blogged about LOST. At first, I did it for a blogging network that wanted two posts from me per week. They were supposed to have other bloggers, but I was the only one who kept it up on a weekly basis. Then they sold it to a guy who basically ruined it, making everything very spammy in the name of “SEO.” He was very interested in keeping me on board to write fresh content for him, but I couldn’t do so in good conscience. To make a long story short, he threatened me with legal action, but I ended up the winner. A monetary judgment was awarded to me for the services I had provided, and both the new blog owner and I shared the rights to publish the content I had written. I published it on my new LOST blog, and the other guy opted out because it was no longer unique content. His blog is dead now. Mine is still going strong.

I write for a living now. I have a handful of clients, some high-profile and some start-ups, who come to me because they need quality content for their Web site. I now utilize my own team of writers to help me keep up with the demand because of my success. I have never spent a single penny on advertising; my clients all come to me.

This works for me on so many levels. I’m earning a living doing something I enjoy, something that I’m really good at. As my own boss, I can create my own schedule to work around my unpredictable periods of exhaustion and brain fog. My mother-in-law watches my son during the week because it’s impossible to concentrate on my writing with a demanding but lovable litle boy who just wants his mommy to play with him all the time. But I can put work on hold when I’m invited to a party at the preschool or when he’s sick and needs to go to the doctor. I have a real job, just like anyone who works in an office, but the perks are so much better.

My mommy blog isn’t paying my bills. My clients pay my bills. But I really love the mommy stuff. I like connecting with my fellow moms who blog on Twitter and at conferences. I love hearing from people who thank me, who tell me that something I wrote in my blog meant something to them.

And I hope that, one day, my mommy blog will pay the bills – just in case anything happens to those high-profile clients who have me write for them every month. I attend conferences to learn how to make that happen. They’re business conferences. That’s what they’re for. (Where’s the snarky NYT article about SXSW?)

I don’t ignore my family to write in my blog all day any more than a reporter ignores her family when she goes to events to provide coverage for the newspaper that employs her, or the father ignores his family when he reports to the office and pushes buttons at the computer in his cubicle all day.

And seriously? If we mommy bloggers never spent any time with our families, how in the world would we be able to write about them?

We blog after when our kids go to bed. We blog when we should be in bed. We blog while our kids are in the room playing amongst themselves. We blog while our kids are sitting on our laps. We blog while our husbands actually get to enjoy their roles as fathers and spend time with our kids. And yes, every once in a while, we blog when maybe we should be paying a little more attention to our kids… but no one is perfect.

What kind of a mommy blogger are you? I’m pretty sure that, no matter the answer, you don’t look much like the insulting stereotype the media would like to paint each of us as.

Christina Gleason is 31 years old, wife to Tom, mother to TJ, and small business owner, Founder of Phenomenal Content LLC. Her blog is Cutest Kid Ever, home of the Dear Kid Saturday meme. Follow her on Twitter @CutestKidEver.

Related posts:

1. I’m a Mommy Blogger and Proud of It
2. I am a Mommy Blogger
3. 2009 Women and Mommy Blogger Conferences
4. The Making of a Mommy Blogger
5. 2010 Women and Mommy Blogger Conferences