Senior Project Meme

Ms. Mazzola (State of Denmark) is doing an informal research project on blogging along with the AP English class she teaches. Anyone who wants to participate may do so by completing her list of questions and leaving a link in the comments to this post.

1. How long have you been blogging?
Since April 2005. Just over four years.

2. Why did you start blogging?
I’m not sure. My husband and I each started blogs about the same time, but I can’t remember what inspired the idea.

3. What have you found to be the benefits of blogging?
– a permanent record of events, thoughts, and ideas – far better than relying on my porous memory.
– discovering a community
– discovering I’m something of an expert in my field!
– the joy of writing.
– I view the blog as source material for a book. Or two.
– I’ve made some real-life friends through blogging
– I’ve even made some money through it
– I’ve done (paid!) work in a field I’d never have considered were it not for someone I met through blogging.
– My kids love that they can google my name and find me all over the place. It’s almost like being famous…

4. How many times a week do you post an entry?
I used to be very conscientious about five, sometimes six days a week. Now I am reasonably consistent, but not religiously so.

5. How many different blogs do you read on a regular basis?
It used to number a couple of hundred. Now I probably read 10 regularly, and several dozen more semi-regularly. I try to visit the blogs of my commenters, at least when they comment.

6. Do you comment on other people’s blogs?
Yes.

7. Do you keep track of how many visitors you have? Is so, are you satisfied with your numbers?
I check in from time to time, much less obsessively than I used to. I’m not entirely satisfied with my numbers, no, because they’ve dropped some, but I know what I could do (used to do) to improve that, and I’m not motivated enough to do it… so I guess I don’t care that much, do I?

8. Do you ever regret a post that you wrote?
No, though a couple I’ve written make me a teeny bit nervous. Oh, wait! One. On another blog (a paid gig, no longer in existence) where I wrote about something personal to my eldest daughter, which I shouldn’t have mentioned without her permission.

9. Do you think your audience has a true sense of who you are based on your blog?
No. MaryP is a persona. People project all sorts of things onto her, based on their perceptions of my career. (A reader I spoke to on the phone kinda-sorta expected me to have a British accent!) I am less outgoing than people imagine me to be, yet far more wry. Though essentially a kind person, I am not at all sentimental about small children, and I have, in the right company and situation, a bit of a potty mouth.

10. Do you blog under your real name?
Not here.

11. Are there topics that you would never blog about?
Yes. Personal things to my family. My real feelings about some of the parents. (!!) I never write unkind and/or malicious stuff, though I enjoy irony, and occasionally allow myself to be just a teeny bit acerbic.

12. What is the theme/topic of your blog?
My work as a daycare provider: cute anecdotes about the children interspersed with more serious essays on parenting.

13. Do you have more than one blog? If so, why?
Yes. One for fun/daycare, one for my more personal thoughts, where I never mention my work. One gets updated several times a week, the other whenever I think of it, sometimes not even once a month. The first is public; the second is private.