I Am What I Am.

I am tired.  I know, this is a recurring theme here on the blog, my sheer exhaustion.  But this time it is not from lack of sleep.  The babe is starting to sleep better and therefore so am I! yay!

No, I am tired of what I have become in the last year.  It was about a year ago that I realized people can and do make money on their blogs.  I started doing reviews, making contacts and turning my blog into a business.

I became concerned with my stats, how many people were reading my blog, who had more readers than me, why did they have more readers, what could I do to get more readers?  I started to post everyday, just to post, just to say I had a post this day so that people would hopefully come back.

I started stressing out about my blog.  Stressing out about my blog people.  I am not Dooce or Pioneer Woman or Soule Mama or NieNie or any of the other highly successful women who blog for their jobs.  This is not my job, it is my hobby.

I am Kim.
I am Prairie Mama. 
I am a Mom who writes about grief and joy and struggles and triumphs.  I am a Mama that is a little bit crunchy and loves homebirth, cloth diapering, babywearing and gentle parenting.  I am a Woman that is strong in her faith, lives it and is not ashamed of it.  I am a Woman who loves her husband and has a great marriage.  I am a person who lives in a small town and really isn't any different from any of the other thousands of Mommy blogs out there.

I thought about shutting down my blog.  Megan from Velveteen Mind said that might happen.  At Blogher last year, she predicted that hundreds of women would leave the conference last year and shut down their blogs.  I thought about it, I really did.  I had become a little cynical about this whole blogging thing and wasn't enjoying it as much anymore.

For the last 6 months I have been talking myself out of shutting down the blog.  I have added ads, changed my layout, continued to network and try to make a name for myself in the Blogging World.

This is why I am tired.  I am sick of trying so hard.  It is a BLOG people.  It is not like I am curing cancer or doing anything extremely meaningful.  I am writing about my life, and while that is meaningful to me and my family, I am not under the illusion that anyone else really cares.   I am keeping a record of my life for my posterity. 

I write as an outlet for me, and if it happens to help other people, awesome.  If not though, I am not going to stress about it.

So what if no one wants to sponsor  me and send me to multiple (or one) conferences?  So what if no one wants to give me a new kitchen, car, or a house?  So what if I make $20 a month (if I'm lucky) on my blog?  So what if I don't know who all the "big" bloggers are?  They're people like me, I am guessing, and are just lucky to have such success.

What I think I am trying to say is...I am scaling back.  I will still have ads here and will still do reviews of products or services that are relevant to me and my life.  I will still write when I feel the need.

I am content with the fact that I may never be a blogger with hundreds of subscribers and followers.  I may never be a blogger that gets paid a lot of money to blog or gets to do really swanky reviews.  I may never run in the inner circles of the cool kids or sit at the cool table and guess what?  I am okay with that.

I am who I am and I am sick of trying to be something that I am not.