So, What’s it All About Then?

I  hear that question in my head every time I think about my blog.

It’s a normal question, a natural reaction to the news that someone is blogging. But over the last few days I’ve realised it is easier for me to address the question with a series of answers best described as “what its not”. And that bothered me to the point that I dusted off my long neglected "business skills" *insert raised eyebrow smilie here!* and created a mind map of categories I might use for the blog. It was challenging, but fun to isolate topics, make the connections between them, and finally see, on paper, a better idea of areas that interest me enough to write about and publish online.

In brief, this blog will fall into two main areas

–                          Family, with themes relating to Expat life, Growing up in Northern Ireland, Kids, Health, & Household stuff including recipes.

–                          Creative Arts related themes including Book reviews & Music.

However, I’ve also realised that it is probably worth stating a few things that I don’t want the blog to be.

I’m not making any money from it, and I’m not a blogging expert so it should never be taken as any more than my personal opinion.

If I like a product or service, I might mention it here and provide links but this blog is not monetised. And by the way, I do have products, services, musicians etc that I am hugely supportive of and there will be a few Fangurl moments, but I don’t receive any remuneration or other benefits for them beyond my own desire to support them.

A more grey area is the challenge to keep the blog personal without making my family, in particular my children, vulnerable in any way. I’m not sure how exactly to do that, given the power of search engines and social network sites etc, but their names will never be published in my blog, and I’ll work the rest out as I go along.

And finally, this is not going to be my online punch-bag when something or someone is bugging me. 

Neither is it a form of self-imposed “therapy”.

I won’t only post positive, happy stuff coz I’m no Pollyanna, but equally it won’t be all doom and gloom or “woe is me”. For me, keeping it real is as important online as it is in the tangible world.

Yeah, I probably could have said all this more succinctly, and I’m probably just about to…  This blog will be a series of realistic snapshots about my life, the good and the bad as well as the bleh.

I’ve done some interesting things, met some famous people, been involved albeit on the periphery, in some historical events, and I’m a stay at home mum of 2 kids who hasn’t earned any money or done a “proper” job in the last 15 years. 

So it is a case of leaping from the sublime to the ridiculous, with all the boring bits sandwiched between.

What follows are my reflections on my world, and I’m sharing them with anyone who cares to read them. I welcome your comments, and look forward to hearing from you if you either agree or disagree strongly with any of the content.