Bruised and battered
Oh boy. Yesterday I slipped down a rabbit hole as I went investigating some of the top UK planning blogs. I got so lost, I'm sadly lacking accurate links here - but I found some great stuff, so I'll list it in no particular order at the end.
But I came away very disheartened for a number of reasons. One - without apparent exception this is a male dominated arena. Two - thanks to the amount of oxygen these uber brains are consuming doing their deep thinking, the air is very thin in the plannersphere. It made me dizzy. Three - all the hype about blogging being the democratization of media as we know it is a complete myth. Can't believe it's taken me this long to figure out that wherever there's a community, there's also the potential for a clique.
What has led me to this conclusion? I was reading one of these brainiac's tips for baby bloggers like me (sorry no link - my subconscious is blanking the whole experience). Apparently bloggers should remember there's A List, B List, C List Bloggers. OK OK, I'd gathered this already. Some people are regularly churning brilliant content. Others are mere pretenders to the throne. I guess that makes me a groupie. And two weeks in, I don't think I'm even old enough to legally drink. So I'm an adolescent groupie (worst sort), trying to rub shoulders with celebs who have varying degrees of fame.
Worst comment was still to come. I shouldn't hope to have any real success in my blogging until I'd earned my stripes over FIVE YEARS?? And I'll know that I have 'arrived' because I'll be getting all of my work by contacts made and developed in the blogging community. What's all that about!!?
Five years of blogging at this kind of frequency?? Jeez - it'd have to be delivering some serious returns way before then, to keep my interest. I think of myself as a tenacious lass, but that's ludicrous.
Worse of all, having really put myself about yesterday, I appear to have caught the clap off one of the sites I visited. (Under age and unprotected blog sex, mother would go mental). My Mac is now making spacey wailing noises that remind me of a subliminal re-enforcement tape I got from a hypno-therapist who helped me stop smoking a few years ago. I'm not sure what messages have been laid into the whale music - but it's sending me mental. For sure.
Maybe I should leave planning for the brainiacs and start a new blog exclusively for maniacs?
But before I do, I'll remember my manners - here's some of the great stuff I discovered yesterday: How to Change the World, BuzzMachine, gapingvoid, furtherandfaster, brandtarot. Apologies to any I missed - you probably wouldn't want links from me. I have the wailing clap.
2 comments:
Planning departments, so male they don't evenhave female loo's I understand.
Can you imagine if women were our town & country planners? What a wonderful place it would be.
Sara,
Ahh, you made me laugh out loud. Let me straighten you out on a few things.
While there are cliques and A, B, and even Z lists -- those things are very fluid. This truth is no different than in our work in marketing. If you focus on yourself, you are going to be the only one who does. Look out to your audience and before you know it, there will be a lot of landscape in your rear view mirror.
5 years? Crap. Complete crap. Think about the counsel you give clients. Do the right things for the right reasons. And the customer (read audience) will come. Maybe not as quickly as you'd like but a heck of a lot quicker than 5 years.
There is one sliver of truth in all you discovered -- blogging takes stamina. It takes a focus. It takes being willing to get a little battered and bruised and still believe in your own voice.
I have complete faith that you can be a very well read and influential blogger. Do you?
Drew
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