I’m not an online sharer, so why would I start a blog?
I flummoxed a journalist not long ago when she Googled me to check for her podcast that I really was who I said I was. ‘I’m not getting very far with this…’ she ventured. I resorted to cranking up the scanner, sending over my birth, marriage, divorce certificates for her peace of mind, my paper-based greatest hits and misses of the 80s, 90s and 00s.
The idea of joining the socials makes me jittery. I know this because my fitness tracker zaps me with heart rate stats if I approach a ‘Sign Up!’ button in moments of uncertainty (What is TikTok? Should I get to know the online enemy before my kids get much older and it gets them? What did happen in the end to sweet Claire from primary school in Wigan?). Heart rate: 120!
And right there is my digital Achilles’ heel: the fitness tracker.
My food tastes good without my photographing it and sharing it for likes. My time with my kids is bananas enough without piling on additional admin to curate it for content. My noble-faced dog Barley might stand atop a mound of autumnal leaves, the glow of his russet coat offset just so, but I reach for the pup treats rather than my phone camera because, well, that’s as far as it seems to need to go for me.
A run, however, seems to be different. If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound? More to the point, if a mother of two young children manages to haul herself out of the house to run around the park, ideally throwing in stretches before and after to avoid disruption to family life due to a sports injury, and if this miracle is NOT logged in two different apps (Fitbit for ease, Strava for back-up) and later thumbs-upped by a handful of friends, did it really happen? Did it count?
For me, no. It turns out that when it comes to exercise I really like a digital pat on the back. The shiny medals and smiley faces logged online beside my activities encourage me to get out there more often and run or swim or walk, and in real life I feel a lot better when I do those things.
My hope is that the same might work with writing. I could continue to try scribbling away in a disarray of notebooks that got jumbled one teatime last October from the kitchen table to a teetering pile by the stairs, spliced with my kids’ Lego instructions and half-finished spelling homework. Or I could try to write here, right now. Commit to sharing work on a blog which will maybe spur me to write more, just like with the exercise, pats on the back or not.
FitBit tells me only 7/250 steps taken so far this hour, so time to move. I’ll just make sure that GPS is connected – wouldn’t want to miss any kudos…
Write Here Right Now 