Often, blogging comes in pairs. You need to have a real-life companion to get you through the grind. B is my companion in more ways than the marital kind. He’s a blogger too. Did you know that? Probably not since I’m writing this against his will. He will die when he sees that I’m finally outing him. That’s just a quirk of his personality. He does good stuff like write a poetry blog that has done well on Tumblr, but then I’m not allowed to talk about it. Oh well. If he wants to divorce me for thinking he’s great, then I guess it’s not meant to be with us. ;D
Back in the olden days (AKA 2004). Taken several hours after I finished my last exam of college. It seemed like a good idea to go get margaritas at noon and then head back up to school to have a photo shoot in the hallway of our professors’ offices.
So he writes a blog on Tumblr. Here it is. He updates it daily and he has a decent following. He is even featured on the Tumblr Spotlight for poetry. Yeah, it’s kind of a big deal. It’s a bit like Freshly Pressed, except it’s categorized and (as far as we can tell) permanent. A few months back he self-published his first collection of poetry. And get this: it actually sold. He’s now working on his second collection. I couldn’t be more proud. Can you tell?
At some point, my husband and I both became obsessed with our blogs. Blogging is currently the biggest passtime we have in common, right behind Miss C. And can she be considered a passtime? That seems like bad parenting. “Oh, you know, I was bored, so I decided to catch up on feeding the baby today. How invigorating!”
I am grateful that we have blogging (and the baby, for that matter) in common. He doesn’t pooh-pooh me when I ask him to take charge of Miss C for the afternoon when I need to catch up on writing, commenting, and reading other blogs. I don’t have to explain to him what Freshly Pressed means, as I do with some of my IRL friends. We can talk about self-hosting, ads, stats, and other shop talk and be fully engrossed in the mundanity of it all. We get excited in each other’s successes. He was the one who wanted me to start a blog in the first place. I’ll talk a bit more about why on Friday in a What’s Next piece.
If you check out his blog, the first thing you’ll notice is that it’s pretty much the exact opposite of mine. He doesn’t make direct references to me or Miss C in his poetry, and you’ll never find a link to my blog there. I like it that way. It makes me know that he’s retaining a shred of himself as we go through these big changes in our lives. He’s still B, but in the guise of Murrooned. And writing a blog is better than playing golf, IMHO.
So when does Miss C get her own URL? Not too soon. We have to protect her. But she occasionally tweets:
Riveting, I know.
Do you have someone in your life who encourages you in an ongoing undertaking like blogging?
The Waiting 
I have been thinking lately as I embark upon blogging how much of my life this could take up and the thought of being here a year later, at times, overwhelms me. It takes a huge committment to decide to be a writer on a daily/weekly basis – plus participate in the blog-world to support other writers.
I think I’m going to have to sacrafice housework (again) … hee hee… but doing it with a small baby is amazing. You both are to be huzzahed!
It’s true that it takes a bit of a commitment, but I’ve found that the more you put into it, the more you get out of it. Haha, easier said than done, right? I live in a small town where I don’t have a lot of friends, and what friends I do have don’t share a lot in common with me other than babies. So this blogging world is where I can go and be myself and “socialize” with other people like me. You seem to be going about it in all the right ways, Rutabaga! Just comment, comment, comment and write, write, write.
talking/comment and writing – yup that’s me! I love this world so far and wonder where this path will me.
It’s interesting how many parts of ourselves we reveal in different places.
My husband and kids encourage me in all of my endeavors, I mean after they tease me mercilessly. (Only kidding) So I guess I’m lucky that way? Actually, everyone in my family writes. It’s such a great therapeutic activity.
It sure is! If Lily is any indication (which I think she is), your family is awesome and something to be admired. A lot of families don’t have that support structure in place.
Your B has some mad poetry magic going on over there – I like his style a lot. Thanks for outing him. I wish Husband would get into the blogging world. He is an IT guy so he can be a great help to me in the setting up and tweaking of my blog but to be able to have conversations about stats and commenting would be great!
Thank you! I obviously think his poetry is pretty rad, mostly because I get his weirdo references. When we were in Florida with my MIL, we walked along the beach a lot and talked about stats and platforms and stuff. Such dorks we are.
My husband encourages me in everything: work, writing, napping, parenting, running. Everything except spending and, if I’m really down, he encourages me to do that,too. Him? He plays hearts on his computer and has a fantasy baseball league. I roll my eyes; I’m a bad wife.
If all you do is roll your eyes, then I think you’re doing OK. Did you ever see Knocked Up where the woman basically runs a background check on her husband to see if he’s cheating on her, and it turns out that he’s only doing fantasy baseball in secret? She says it’s worse than actually cheating. Um, no.
Haven’t seen knocked up. I don’t have a problem with the fantasy baseball thing. I actually got him a baseball cap with his team name embroidered on it. He formed the team during the Kuwait invasion and named them The Scuds. They aren’t very good, but he has a cool team hat!
All I can say is have a fantastic dinner ready when B gets home this evening. you know as a buffer ~~~
Haha I know! Good thing he doesn’t read my blog so he’ll likely never find out.
My husband encourages me a lot. He helps me with behind the scenes stuff and design, so we talk about my blog a lot, but he doesn’t have one of his own. He likes that I write, and he keeps me going when I’m sitting there saying, “Oh my god, this sounds like crap. Why am I even doing this?”
You should get him to do a guest spot again! I loved that post he wrote about quitting smoking! Do you think he’d be up to it?
Great first tweet from baby! So clever!
Thank you. She is very wired.
hmm, I tend to think I do this *despite* the eye-rolling that happens when we’re out and about and I exclaim, “THIS IS GOING IN THE BLOG!”
Haha! No spouse is safe!
C and her parents are brilliant writers!!!!!! As are her bright and shiny grandmothers. :)
What will we do if she turns out to be a mathematician instead? Call her the missing link?
Hubs is relentlessly supportive, as are both of our parents. He actually wants me to finish with this book business so we can travel all summer and I can write during our time out of Austin. If you ask me, he’d have it pretty good that way, too. ;)
I tend to agree! What a dreamy guy ;) Dontcha love awesome husbands?
I love that old picture of you guys! So adorable! Congrats on a year of blogging awesomeness, and on a week of posts: woohoo! Eric is my most amazing blog and writing supporter, and I don’t think I could do it without him. He takes pictures for style posts, wrangles all the back-end stuff, gives great advice, and always always always has my back. Pretty awesome. Em, remember when we used to imagine what our husbands would be like? We totally hit the jackpot.
LOL, that pic is some of Melissa’s early work. Can you tell? ;)
Eric is amazing. I love to imagine y’all doing those photo shoots and then drinking lattes together and then making some quinoa. We indeed hit the husband jackpot.
My teenage kids are sometimes embarrassed, sometimes disgusted and sometimes annoyed by my posts. My husband is proud whenever I mention him (regardless of whether I refer to him as the Original Obnoxious One or Captain Dumb Dumb) But my dogs always always always love them :)
When you make millions on your debut novel about your kids, I have a feeling their tunes will change. ;)
I enjoy being the sole blogger in my household. I enjoy the “what is she talking about? I’ll just smile and nod” looks I get from my husband.
You really need to get Squish to start blogging ASAP. I would truly enjoy hearing about his life, even if the posts are short.
HA! Now THERE’S an idea!
A dubious one, for sure.
Emily, you know who has encouraged me! First the sneaky little Kiki who helped me get over the hump of “I have nothing to say, and it is arrogant to write things about yourself and think someone is going to read it “phase, then Eric for patiently and repeatedly walking me through a few WordPress basics, then David for always thinking whatever I write is so totally smart and interesting, and then YOU for reading my blog and saying such nice things. This blogging thing is turning out to be fun! I’m glad you and Ben can talk shop!
I think it’s cool that you and your husband both work on blogs. My hubby doesn’t blog yet, but he’s been very supportive of what I’ve been doing, and writing for me has finally become a lot of fun.